I occasionally have dreams that I’m back in school. At some point in the dream I realize that I’m dreaming, because well, it’s November in the school year and I’m 41 and in high school. Makes no sense. But I figure I’m not waking up anytime soon, I’ve already gotten through three months. Sometimes I make it through the entire school year, sometimes I wake up in the middle of it, sometimes I wake up right after realizing I’m dreaming.
My question though is, how come when I wake up I don’t actually function as someone who has been away for months? When I wake up it’s just like a night of sleep, just another day. Is the part of your brain that stores recent memories seperate from the subconscious so that my subconscious can be away for what seems like awhile while my conscious brain maintains memories as if it’s only been a few hours?
Never heard of a person having dreams that felt like they lasted for months. Mine are just snippets of things. Have never had any that involved a distinct passage of time or even a frame of reference for time whatsoever.
Now after waking up I do sometimes feel like I’ve just risen from a slumber of 1000 years, simply because the tiniest movement feels like a Herculean effort.
In my dreams, things seem to happen in a sequence with no lag time. Travel time, unless it is part of the narrative, simply doesn’t exist. If I decide to go to the store, I am then at the store, and the story continues. That’s not to say that the story is very coherent; I might get to the store and realize I’ve forgotten a needed item, then wander off in a complicated search for that item. The search might then very well constitute the rest of the dream, or some other quest might ensue. But however it falls together, there is never lag time. Travel periods and wasted time are handles much as in movies; they are assumed and only relevant elements to the “story” are generally included.