The past few weeks at work have been fairly stressful, and I’ve not been getting quite enough sleep. When that happens, I seem to have much more vivid dreams than usual.
Last night, I had one in which I was in some small town in the northeast US, which seemed to be in a state of flood. I was standing on a dike, looking at the floodwaters, with a bunch of 1910-era wooden houses behind me. I had the impression my younger sister was around somewhere, but not visible.
Out of the floodwaters came swimming a tiny little dog with a short brown, white and black coat and ridiculously short legs, sort of like a cross between a dachshund and a beagle puppy. I plucked it out of the water and held it (it was no larger than my hand) and it looked up at me with sad doggy eyes, exhausted. I sat down, it nestled in my lap and I thought, feeling annoyed, Where’s my sister? She’s the one who’s good with animals.
And that was pretty much it. I woke up, got dressed for work, started down the stairs, and…had to sit down on one of the steps as I suddenly burst into tears. I’m a 58-year-old guy, BTW, and don’t normally get all emotional about half-remembered dreams involving fictional puppies. I can’t say for sure what was going on there, but I sort of had the impression that actually I was that little dog, exhausted, nearly drowned, and helpless. Something like that, anyway.
So, thought I’d check: what sort of unexpectedly emotional reactions to dreams have y’all had? All stories welcome.
Allowing animals to come to harm is this for me too! One of the dreams that most haunted me after I have it was one where I accidentally neglected a kitten by locking it in my room. When I found it it was lying limp in a puddle of its own piss. I doubt a cat would actually piss itself for lack of a litter box, but I guess my subconscious did this for dramatic flair. At the time I found this dream extremely disturbing and upsetting.
I routinely have nightmares about neglecting pets. Usually it’s letting the fish tank get all scummy. I don’t even have a fish tank. I am always filled with revulsion by the state of the animals. I’m pretty sure these dreams stem from my guilt over an actual pet I neglected when I was six years old. Our rabbit was in a shed a fair distance from our house, and it was dark in the morning when I was supposed to feed it. I was so scared to go out there in the dark and didn’t give it enough food. I know I was too young to be responsible for what happened, but to this day it haunts me.
My cats died (of old age, not neglect!) six and seven years ago, and I still sometimes have nightmares of “omigod, I’m out of cat food/didn’t fill their water bowls/didn’t change the litter box!”
I also dream about my Mom sometimes and wake up crying, but that’s probably going to be an off-and-on lifelong thing and is hardly unusual–I’m sure everyone dreams about dead loved ones.
It’s hard for me to narrow down because my dreams are almost always pretty vivid. So much so that I am usually more tired after sleeping than before.
So, while not my MOST emotional, strictly speaking- I did have 2 dreams in the last couple days with unusual side effects, both involving my brothers.
On Friday, I dreamed that one of my brothers killed himself. He had just gotten off the phone with someone, me or another family member, and then he just… killed himself. It was, as it would be in real life, an utter shock. I didn’t wake up crying, but I woke up disoriented because it seemed so real. I spent about 15 minutes just feeling so intensely angry.
Yesterday, I dreamed that another brother was putting Pepsi cans into a garbage bag and the bag broke somehow. Me, mom, and a 3rd brother put all the cans into another garbage bag and into a container. Later, he pulled the bag out of the container to take out, and it broke AGAIN. All these Pepsi cans came falling out, clakclakclakclak. My 3rd brother and I laughed so hard at him in my dream that I actually laughed myself awake. That has never happened to me before. I don’t even know anyone who drinks pepsi.
I didn’t want children and have never been pregnant. I had a dream where a little girl explained to me she was supposed to be my daughter, but since I didn’t have kids my son was born to someone else and she was now his daughter. Then a guy who looked exactly like my older brother told me “I was supposed to be her brother, but now I’m her father.”
I had a pet turtle and we would let it wash itself in the bathtub once every week (don’t know if it liked this or not, but there ya go.) One time I thought it wanted to swim so I filled up the tub high and when I got back the turtles eyes were getting hazy from exhaustion. I keep remembering it as me drowning the turtle, even though it didn’t happen.
Both my parents passed away a few years ago and they do occasionally show up in my dreams, although in odd ways and always still alive. For example, I keep having one about my Dad in which he’s been living in an apartment in a low-rent area of my Pennsylvania hometown and no one, including me, has bothered to go see him in months, even though we know he’s ill. I should mention although he and my Mom were estranged to the point where he slept in the basement and she upstairs for decades, they never split up, he never moved out and his kids, myself included, always had a great relationship with him.
Another odd thing: my parents and my long-time female companion (from my days in Paris) are the only recognizable persons (other than the occasional celebrity) who ever show up in my dreams. As related in the OP, I might sense the presence of my sister or other close relatives, but she is never there in person, nor any other close relatives or best friends. I can remember elaborate details of bodies and faces of persons who do show up, but they are almost never someone I know from real life.
Couple nights ago I dreamt that doctors were telling me I had a stroke. Mild one a three out of a ten scale. They sprayed water on my back and I couldn’t feel it put I told them I could hear the spraygun and see water must as the spray bent around my body. Very vivid. Shook me up.
I awoke from an odd, vivid dream this morning. I dreamed that I was an old thief in a dungeon, talking to a new prisoner, interrupted every few words by racking coughs. I was telling him about the plans and arrangements I’d made over the years to escape–plans I’d never be able to use, because I was dying of tuberculosis, and not fit or quiet enough to pull it off. The kid was a political prisoner, who had been thrown in with me because they couldn’t execute him for some reason, but wanted him to catch TB and die of it. So I gave him a way out instead, not so much because I wanted to help him as because I wanted to spit blood in the eyes of the powers that had locked me away to die.
I woke up feeling angry and resentful, and when I sat up in bed, I had a coughing fit.