I suck at having nightmares.
This has been true for a while. When I was younger I had nightmares like a normal person. I remember being chased by monsters, waking up just as death was seemingly a given... They mostly came while I was sick, but I had them.
Not anymore.
Sometimes I have dreams that are clearly trying to go dark. The early feeling of vague dread gives it away. There might be a monster, or zombies, or something else. They still come for me.
But things are different now. These days, when I realize that something is dream hunting me, I respond with oddly sensible choices for a dream. They fail. Nightmares can be persistent that way. But now, things end differently.
Now, when the monsters get close, when the threats become real, when things have gone too far...
This has been true for a while. When I was younger I had nightmares like a normal person. I remember being chased by monsters, waking up just as death was seemingly a given... They mostly came while I was sick, but I had them.
Not anymore.
Sometimes I have dreams that are clearly trying to go dark. The early feeling of vague dread gives it away. There might be a monster, or zombies, or something else. They still come for me.
But things are different now. These days, when I realize that something is dream hunting me, I respond with oddly sensible choices for a dream. They fail. Nightmares can be persistent that way. But now, things end differently.
Now, when the monsters get close, when the threats become real, when things have gone too far...
I kill the monsters.
This isn't a motivational speech. That's the real plot arc I experience in my
nightmares these days, when I have them at all.
It's not particularly aggressive.
When it's clear that they intend to attack me, I glare at them. And then I force them out of existence. Through sheer force of will. They burn out in a flash of white. Once I woke up just after this, only to realize
that I had just sleep-ordered my bedroom "No, You. Will. NOT."
That can be interesting.
There is one exception. The closest thing I still have to a real nightmare does recur. Not often, but probably at least once a year. I remember, months later, that at the start of the term, I registered to take an introductory calculus course. I'm still modern me, so the rationale for this is always strained. Once, I enrolled at my old high school just because I remembered classes being so... thorough... there. More often, I just skipped over it to do the harder classes, but had to finally go back and finish off requirements. I'm never scared of the class. I'm scared of having ignored that I'm enrolled in a class that I haven't even gone to for MONTHS. Of the threat that there might just be nothing I can do about it anymore.
These dreams end on the question, which is why I find them relevant here. It's happened just often enough that my conscious mind can quickly cut through the fog of waking now with the simple news of: "You're fine. You've passed all classes for forever."
In other words, the closest thing I now have to nightmares is the dawning realization that I forgot to bother with something that turned out to matter more than it should. In the high school variant, I actually remember debating if it even mattered. If anyone would even notice.
These are my bad dreams.
That can be interesting.
There is one exception. The closest thing I still have to a real nightmare does recur. Not often, but probably at least once a year. I remember, months later, that at the start of the term, I registered to take an introductory calculus course. I'm still modern me, so the rationale for this is always strained. Once, I enrolled at my old high school just because I remembered classes being so... thorough... there. More often, I just skipped over it to do the harder classes, but had to finally go back and finish off requirements. I'm never scared of the class. I'm scared of having ignored that I'm enrolled in a class that I haven't even gone to for MONTHS. Of the threat that there might just be nothing I can do about it anymore.
These dreams end on the question, which is why I find them relevant here. It's happened just often enough that my conscious mind can quickly cut through the fog of waking now with the simple news of: "You're fine. You've passed all classes for forever."
In other words, the closest thing I now have to nightmares is the dawning realization that I forgot to bother with something that turned out to matter more than it should. In the high school variant, I actually remember debating if it even mattered. If anyone would even notice.
These are my bad dreams.
I have good ones too.
They're nice.
