sick and sickness dreams
So… we’ve been, collectively, sick for over a week now. The boys first got whatever it is sometime around last weekend – brought home from daycare no doubt. Then I got it Tuesday, and Jen the day after or so. I missed two days of work and Jen missed one. And we’re still feeling like shit.
The one good thing to come of it, for me, is the crazy ass dreams I have.
The first/worst night, when I slept on the couch in a shivering huddle, I “woke up” in the middle of the night to the sensation of my body exploding and reforming. Suddenly everyone could do anything. I could will myself not to be sick – and it lasted as long as I concentrated. I could make anything, do anything, but mostly I didn’t because I was still huddled on the couch trying not to be sick. I was vaguely aware of everyone else in the world struggling with their newfound abilities as well. It was very vivid.
Another night I dreamed of these mammoth shipwrecks piled across this lake, and how my dad had a giant ship. At one point my grandpa & I were watching him swim from the top of a cliff. Then a polar bear and 3 cubs attacked my dad, swimming below. We watched him climb the cliff, trying to escape, but the bears climbed as well. He scaled at least a hundred feet, just about to my grandpa & me – who couldn’t reach over the fence to help him for some reason (dreams) – then the bear smacked him and we watched him fall all the way back down. Somehow he didn’t smack his head on a rock, and managed to swim down the river to a beach and escape. I remember the feeling of terror that my dad was about to be eaten by a bear, then the sense of him falling, the sureness that the fall had split his head, then the relief that he was still alive and moving. Note that my father was very fit in this dream!
Last night… I can’t remember most of it, but it was another waterfront dream. At some point I was carrying a (heavy) orphan across town to check on some paperwork, then by the time I got back to the beach area (which was having some kind of emergency) I was DEAD tired from carrying this heavy kid around. I remember a school bus careening off a cliff, I think because whatever the emergency was drove the driver to suicide. Then these dudes cliff dove from WAY high into the river below to try and save people. I remember wondering where the news crew (whose office was just down the road) was.
There were more, I’m sure. And may be even more, as the end of whatever we have still seems a few days off.
I’d be curious to know how much more outlandish my dreams could be if sickness or pregnancy effected them. The other night, I had one about these psychos removing the eyeballs of a man’s wife and son while they were conscious but totally drugged out of their minds. There was nothing gory about the dream, but the disturbing factor was off the charts, even for me. Man. I could tell you the whole procedure.
Mostly I don’t remember mine, the ones that I do tend to be fairly vivid. It may just be that the sickness-sleep was lighter or heavier and allowed me to remember more?
Well, I’ve heard pretty often that sickness and pregnancy make for crazy dreams. But I have those all the time. Vivid feature films and often sequels. And being sick and pregnant (and both) didn’t seem to make them any MORE crazy. Which woulda been, I dunno, like something out of Strange Days?