Sleepwalking: Smack!

I had forgotten about this. I remembered last night when my roommate and I were talking about my sleepwalking habits.

A couple years ago, I had a particular sleepwalking habit. I usually sleep on my back. I got into the habit of putting my right arm straight up in the air. I would hold it there for a long while, sleeping normally but with my arm up, as if I had a question. Then, suddenly I would relax my arm all at once. It would fall and my hand would hit me in the face.
The first few times this happened, I woke up startled. "Who slapped me??" were my first thoughts.

I started to catch on after this happened several nights in a row. My arm was always cold, and numb as if all the blood had drained out of it. One night my arm fell in such a way that my hand stayed on my face. Only after that did I know for sure that it was me, basically slapping myself in the face.

An old boyfriend once saw me do it. He lay awake, watching in astonishment as my hand balanced straight up in the air, then eventually fell. I woke up and asked him sleepily why he had slapped me.
He was indignant and amused of course. He said my arm was up for a good 6 minutes before it fell.

I'm glad that particular habit is no more. It's not fun to be smacked awake every night by your own hand.

Sleeptalking: No, thank you!

Last night I woke up suddenly at about 4am. I was standing in the middle of my room. I had just yelled:

"For the last time, I will NOT buy a divining rod!"

I woke up in the middle of this sentence. I almost fell over, which sometimes happens when I wake up standing. I remember nothing of the context. I think I remember this sentence only because I became conscious in the middle of it, but I have a feeling I had said a lot more.

I hope it's not true.

Here's something that happened in my waking life.

Two days ago, two friends and I were sitting at a table in a Thai restaurant. Suddenly a homeless man comes in the door, looks directly at me, and yells:
"The people you see in your dreams, can see you too!"

Then he looked away and started screaming things about Jesus until the waiters escorted him out. The thing he screamed at me, and the thing he screamed about Jesus were in two different tones, as if they were unrelated topics.

I think my eyes widened and my face blanched. It freaked me out.
He could have looked at anyone in there. Someone with normal dreams! Someone who would just ignore him. But he had to look at me: crazy-dream-girl.

Dream: Electrocution

About two years ago, I was visiting my friend Alisha in San Francisco. I've never sleepwalked while at her house, but I always dream crazy things there. During this visit, I dreamed I was electrocuted.

In the dream, Alisha and I were taking a long walk. Along the side of a field we were walking by were several large machines that looked a bit like cranes, but had power lines running from one to the other. As we were walking by, suddenly we heard a startling shout from above us. We looked up in time to see a man falling off of one of these cranes. He fell to his death, landing about fifteen feet in front of us.

We stood there in shock. He was obviously dead. We couldn't move, we were so surprised and horrified. As we stood there, the crane started to groan, as if it was about to topple over. Several live wires got loose and started to fall. A large portion of the top of the crane broke off and fell.

Alisha was still in shock, and I had to push her out of the way, and dive in the opposite direction in order to save us. Unfortunately, the place where I landed was in the middle of the live wires, and I was electrocuted.
I woke up in Alisha's house convulsing, like I was having a seizure. I couldn't stop for about ten seconds after waking. My body was so pumped full of adrenaline, I was panting. I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night.


Last night, I had a similar dream. This time, I was the one who couldn't react fast enough, and Alisha had to push me away. I still landed in the live wires, and was killed. I wasn't convulsing when I woke up, but I was shivering uncontrollably.
Today, in the back of my mind, I've been a bit nervous around electrical things.

Dreams: More Blasphemy

My subconscious is so blasphemous. O_o

I dreamed I was a psychiatrist of sorts, but my specialty was to help religious people turn away from their faith and embrace a religionless reality. It was my job to ease them into the transition of a non-religious mentality and to be there to help them in their feelings of grief over it. The idea in the dream was that they were much better off for having done it.
"Its like putting peroxide on a cut," I told them. "It can hurt like hell, but it has to be done if you're going to heal."

Then the dream morphed into me being a Pharaoh-like character. My city had a national religion that I had always tolerated. I had always known unquestionably that it was a completely false set of beliefs. My people were starting to get out of hand with their worship, practicing sacrifice, neglecting living activities because they were too preoccupied with the afterlife. I decided to ban the religion, and destroy all temples and statues dedicated to the god. (I think his name was Bale...but I'm not sure.)
I commissioned new statues, asking the sculptor to come up with a new symbol to symbolize the importance of life and ethics and the people as the most important beings, with me as their leader. I remember being worried that the symbol would become an icon and people would personify it and begin to worship it again. I woke up before the statues were finished.

Dreams: Audition

Yesterday I had an audition. Auditions make me nervous. Those nerves often leak into my dreams.

The night before the audition, I had 8-10 dreams. All short, all lame, all ending the exact same way. Here are some examples:

. I was on a small raft, floating down a very wide, very slow moving stream. I was nervous because I had heard there were dangerous things in this water, like piranhas, and even crocodiles. Suddenly the biggest crocodile I have ever seen leaped halfway out of the water, his jaws aimed at me. I was lying on my back, and had very little time to react. I put one foot on his top jaw, and one on his bottom, trying to keep myself from going inside his mouth.
While I was struggling for my life, I thought: Wait a moment...I have an audition today. Shit.
The dream ended abruptly. Another began.

. I was working undercover for the CIA. My job was to follow this guy who would be attending a wedding in southern Mexico. I was to pretend to be the Bride's sister and attend it as well. Eventually, he caught wind of me, and tried to make a run for it. I cornered him in an ally, gun in hand. While holding him at gunpoint against the wall, I suddenly thought: Wait a minute...I have an audition today. It's in Ohio. I'm in Mexico. How am I going to get there in time?
The dream ended.

. I was a four year old, daughter of a ships captain. We were a trade ship, not outside the law, but not operating perfectly within it either. We shipped goods from Sri Lanka to Europe, bypassing the main tax/toll areas. In the dream, my father was holding me up to the ship's helm, allowing me to steer. I was full of four-year-old joy. Then suddenly I turned to my father and said: "Wait a moment... I have an audition today. Daddy, I have to get to my audition. And I'm not four years old... I'm in grad school." My father looked at me like I had gone mad.
Then the dream ended.

My brain woke me up aggressively with the thought: I HAVE AN AUDITION TODAY. D:
Now that the audition is over, I realize how much tension I was holding. I feel better now. And last night, I dreamed only small dreams.

Dream: Dreaming?

I dreamed that I was an investment banker. I dreamed a lot of details of that life. I was 37 years old. I was unmarried, but had a long time boyfriend, and we were talking about marriage within the next year. I made decent money -certainly enough to live comfortably, and enough to send some help to my only sister who just got laid off. I drove a Lexus. I was moderately happy in my work, but needed a vacation. I was fantasizing about going to Fiji soon. My name was Grace.

The dream was a normal day in my life. I dreamed the entire day. I got up, got ready for work, took a shower, stopped at the gas station and Starbucks on my way to work. I went to lunch at 1:30, and left work a little early that day because my sister was in town and I was taking her to dinner.

While driving in the car with my sister, we were catching up on each other's lives, joking about our crazy parents etc. She asked me if I was still having strange dreams. I said yes. She knows I've been having these dreams for about 25 years. I regularly dreamed that my name was Lizzy, and right now I was going to a music school in Cleveland, but used to go to a Californian school for Anthropology. The dreams went into great detail about Lizzy, and often I dreamed through an entire day of Lizzy's life. Me(Grace) and my sister have been talking about these Lizzy dreams for as long as we can remember. My sister found it fascinating.
"What if you were Lizzy in a past life?"
"I don't know." I said. I didn't really believe in past lives. "Besides, it doesn't seem to be in a different time period or anything. Lizzy lives in modern Cleveland."
"Wouldn't it be scary if there really was a Lizzy? What if you met her someday?"
"Yeah that would be creepy. They're just dreams. But still, I'm glad that I have no reason to go to Cleveland."


Ok so this dream is creepy on many levels. For anyone who is reading this blog who doesn't know me, I am Lizzy, and all those details about me are true. I'm dreaming about Grace, who is dreaming about me. To say waking up from a dream like that is confusing is an understatement.