Your Brain Wants Steak

[jamesq]

It's rare that I remember my dreams. When I feel like examining this, I generally concede that my subconscious has way too much shit going on, so it closes it off to my conscious mind to protect me. Of course, that's personifying aspects of my personality, so I suspect that's just a bullshit justification. The reality is probably closer to some folks just don't remember their dreams very often and you happen to be in that group.

One thing I have become more aware of is a reoccurring scenario. I'll wake up in the middle of the night utterly convinced that I've forgotten to do something important. At the time the thing will seem very real and clear as day. If I put off doing it until morning (sometimes the thing will be something that has to wait) I won't remember it when I wake up. If it's something that has to be done right this instant it will vanish when I come fully awake to deal with it. On very rare occasions, I might get out of the room only to be left thinking "Why the hell did you get up and walk out of your bedroom".

In both cases I'm left the next morning with conflicting thoughts - on one hand, the urgency to fix a problem is still there, even if I can't remember what the problem was. On the other hand, my rational mind says "you were just dreaming. Cope."

I could leave a notepad on my bedside table, but I'd be worried that it would be a huge let down. Like I really am forgetting something, but it's something trivial that my subconscious mind has blown out of proportion. I'd wake up to find "don't forget to buy milk" or "eat more fiber" written on the pad.

Comments

[oblivions.livejournal.com]

When I was younger I had dreams that were real enough to integrate into my memories. Once I tip toed around my mother all day until she finally confronted me about it. I said replied that she was mad at me and didn't she remember yelling at me? To which she replied no, she had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

It happens less now thankfully.

[jamesq]

Possible TMI - you have been warned.

One reoccurring dream I have only happens when my bladder is full. In the dream I'll be wandering around some ill-designed urban setting (a shopping mall designed by ferrets for example) looking for a bathroom. Clearly my physical discomfort in the real world is affecting my dreamscape. I'll find numerous bathrooms, but events will conspire to prevent me from using them. The urinals are all out of order, or the walls are missing so I'm in full view of the food court. Obviously this is my subconscious' way of keeping me from wetting the bed.

Now it's happened enough times (maybe once a year or so) that I've told myself "If you're in this sort of surreal no-bathrooms-available situation you must be dreaming, so wake up". Despite that, it never occurs to me in the dream. What happens is that the physical discomfort wakes me up instead and I realize Oh crap, I've been having that dream again.

This is a long convoluted way of me saying, if I were to put the notepad beside the bed, I'd never actually use it.

[ladyerwyn.livejournal.com]

Use the notepad. You only have about 30 seconds upon awakening to write it down before you forget. Also I have the bathroom dreams too. I get the half sized doors and walls to the stall and there are groups of people standing around in the bathroom chatting. Or the toilets are clogged and filled to the brim with digusting waste. Most of the time I can use the bathroom, but I always have to go again when I'm done and sometimes in my dream a chair is a toilet and it seems strange to me that I'm going to the bathroom in a chair in the livingroom and that the chair will be soiled when I'm done, but I can't figure out what is wrong about it.

Last night I had this dream that I got dressed up in some kind of combat outfit and fought vampires, but I wasn't a slayer. My husband was the boss vampire in the area, but I didn't know him in the dream and when I was fighting the vampires (actually I wasn't so much fighting as I was floating near the ceiling and staying out of arms reach of a vampire) he seduced me and slept with me.

Then I went on a field trip at school to some place in another town and on the way back to the busses I was turned into a vampire and I was trying to figure out how to get away from my class so they wouldn't find out, but people didn't know about vampires. I think I was also in love with the vampire who made me. It got dark and it turns out the whole town was vampires and they didn't want me to leave and I don't know why. I had to stay the night and there was something going on with a creepy, spider-cat-doll that kept following me and getting close, so I picked it up and threw it. Weird.

[hislittlekitty.livejournal.com]

I think the unusable bathroom dream is pretty common. I also have it on occation.

[jamesq]

So when you get that dream, you interpret it as "time to wake up", whereas when I get that dream I interpret it as "Another broken toilet? What are the odds of that?"

Clearly someone has a more useful subconscious then the other, and I'm coming out on the short end.

[mallt.livejournal.com]

I'm like vilashna... I've had that kind of dream so many times now I know it's a dream & wake myself up...