“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”
—- Inception
The worst kind of dream is when you dream that you wake up in your own bed. I mean, if you are dreaming you are in a submarine on Mars – if things go wonky, you can say to yourself, “Well, there are no submarines on Mars, and if there were, I wouldn’t be in one.” You know you are dreaming and can relax, knowing you will be awake sometime soon.
I rarely remember my dreams (There is that weird, just awoke, feeling where you feel the dream memories draining away like water down a drain) and when I do, they are very mundane and frustrating, like my real life.
Sometimes, though, I remember vividly.
The other night I dreamed that I was at Starbucks for a while, when it was time to go I discovered my car had been stolen. I walked around the parking lot, looking at the vacant space where my car used to be. Understandably, I was pretty upset and wondering how I was going to get home until I realized I was dreaming.
Right after that, I woke up in my bed… the sun was rising and I could see gray through the windows. I sat up, parted the curtains and looked out. My car was gone. Not a good way to start the day.
Then… I woke up again. I had been dreaming that I was in bed. This time, looking out at the street, I was relieved to see my car.
Unfortunately, there was an inch of ice all over it. There would be scraping before I made it to work.
I’ve had one of those ‘the car is gone!’ dreams. It was so vivid that the first thing I did was go outdoors to be sure it actually was still in its parking spot.