I dream of oblivion.
In this dream, my sense of self-awareness is gone.
“I” do not exist.
No sight, sound or sensation.
I wake in terror.
This has happened since my early childhood, perhaps from infancy.
Sometimes frequently.
Been 7 years since the last time. Still, I expect it again.
Listening to someone recounting their acid trip usually pips it to the post. 
When I was under a lot of personal stress, I would have a re-occurring theme of being a spy or some kind of adventurer. And I would always wake up screaming because I would get killed in the end: boiled in a pot of water, driving fast off a high cliff into the jungle below, getting shot/stabbed/crushed. This could happen twice a week.
And when I’m sleeping and running a fever, I have a dream that I get big enough to be able to walk around the circumference of the Earth with just a dozen steps or so. I keep walking around it (clockwise starting at the North Pole, as seen from space) with a hoop and a stick. That one repeats exactly everytime I’m sick.
The rabbits represent verility & fertility
The onions represent foul odors
The nazi guards represent brutal efficiency
The giant vagina represents American consumerism
Hence, your dream obviously represents the fact you’re very distressed over your inability to get your girlfriend pregnant. You’re blaming it on her poor feminine hygeine and have yet to figure out how to escape the situation at hand in your SUV.
And what does my dream mean? Post #41
My most memorable dreams for most of my life have been in, sround or somehwere near stores, malls or shopping centers. Totally unconnected events occur in stores and shopping carts are normally present.
A friend suggested that this revolves around choices. Seeing plenty of choices of things and never quite making any. Very interesting theory.
I drive a Saturn. :wally
I had a recurring series of dreams that went on for about 10 years. I would get the dream about 2-3 times a month. The general scenario was as follows:
–These dreams stopped on 9/11.
–The evening of 9/11, I was asked to ride shotgun on a DOD approved courier flight with supplies to NY. This was completely out of the blue because I only hold a VFR license so I would normally not get involved in anything like this.
–My company went out of business (not directly related to 9/11 but it happened within weeks of it).
I’m not much on the meaning of dreams because my dreams usually make sense. They involve my hobbies and interests or reflect the events of what happened that day.
I’ve learned over time that when I have a violent or scary dream it means I need to wake up because I am either late for work or sick. when this happens I can recognize that I’m dreaming and will wake up.
What I’ve found interesting about my dreams is that I’ve created a number of locations that I recognize in later dreams. They usually represent places I’m familiar with but are distinctly different.
The only repeating dream I ever had was dreaming of seeing a giant wall of water, like a huge wave, hundreds of feet high, coming toward me where I was on shore.
I always awoke before it hit. I haven’t had the dream for a very long time.
I have the stupid falling dream, no memory of it, which is weird, as I dream very vividly, but I wake up feeling like I just crashed onto the bed.
I also have had a series of nightmares about getting raped. They freak me out for days/weeks, as they are always very realistic, envolving people I know and don’t like, in places that I generally would like to consider safe, my apartment, the building I work in, excerta. I haven’t had one in months, thankfully.
I’ve had the oblivion dream, too, twice. The first time wasn’t all that great, but I didn’t wake up screaming either, even though I died in the dream and ceased to exist.
The second time I died, I thought to myself: “So I’ve experienced death! That’s not so bad, even though I no longer exist.” Not in so many words, of course, just a great sense of relief that there was no horror of death.
Then, I realized I was still alive, and I started to wake up. That was the worst dream I’ve ever had: I was ripped apart from the Nirvana-like state into the world again, where there was the possibility still of a horrific death.
I’ve had the classic flying/jumping dreams, as well as the college-never-been-to-classes dreams too.
But one dream that I have that I don’t think has been mentioned before is I’ve had several dreams about institutional bathrooms. Such as the ones found in airports or schools.
This is where the normally black and white dreams that people have, including myself, is an advantage. For the bathrooms are always tiled, very echoey and empty, with row upon nameless row of urinals and stalls. Just the type of place to have a leaky pipe dripping somewhere in the background.
The black and white aspect of this makes the dreams totally noir, even though they are well-lit and I’ve never encountered any violence in them.
I, too, have that frustration dream–I have to get somewhere and I get lost or sidetracked or otherwise delayed. This is my default dream–I swear I have one at least once a month. The details are always different but similar, if you know what I mean. I’m often in a large city, Boston, I think. I live in a small city but have visited Boston many times.
Occasionally I have the “oops, I forgot my clothes” dream. Ditto the “can’t make the buttons work/have to start over” dream. Cafeterias pop up as the setting for many dreams as do college campuses. A few times, I have dreamed that I am in danger from some evil person and I find the reserves of strength to grab his head and smash it repeatedly into the floor. That’s how I always escape–beating someone’s head into the floor. I wake up sweaty and disturbed from those dreams. Before school starts every fall (I am a teacher), I dream that I am late in getting to my classroom on the first day and the kids are out of control.
But the one dream that I have at least once a week is that I have to pee and either can’t find a bathroom, or the bathroom I find is unusable (no door or extremely dirty). And when I wake up–yup, I have to pee for real. If I ever dream that I find a beautifully clean bathroom and let 'er rip, I will probably wake up to wet sheets. :o
I have the forgot-to-drop-calculus and now it’s final week et cetera dreams a lot, and the forgot to drop two history classes and need to write 2 papers on topics I know nothing about tonight (often a very confusing library is involved). With the first one it’s sometimes paired with having forgotten how to open my locker, which is why I’ve never had my math book which is trapped inside.
(I remember the first time in grad school that I had a nightmare about GIVING an exam-- the thing was all photocopied wrong, and the slides I was using were the wrong ones, the students started getting angry and mutinous, etc. I told my academic advisor about this and he just chuckled and said “Now you’re on OUR side of the fence!” These teaching nightmares are becoming more frequent.)
I have the telephone dialing trouble dream and the scary impossibly tall bridge dream. I also have dreams of driving off of cliffs, and a lot of airport/ air travel gone wonky dreams, and bad moving-house dreams-- trying to everything packed or unpacked in a new place. I’ve also had the witnessing-a-plane-crash dream several times, and yeah it is super-realistic OH MY GOD THAT PLANE’S REALLY CRASHING. Very disturbing.
I also have various nasty dreams involving the miscare of pet rodents-- the revelation that I’ve forgotten about a cage of pet mice for months or something. Very upsetting.
But one that I have frequently, which only Proudest Monkey has even approached, is the abject poop dream. I REALLY need to go, but I can’t find a toilet that is clean (think Trainspotting), or has a stall door and isn’t surrounded by my entire high school gym class hanging around, etc. My eventual pooping activity in the dream is messy and often public and ill and disgusting and makes an enormous mess, involving missing the toilet (or not having one at all) and maybe not missing my shirt tails or some other complications-- which can get very baroque–that I am very ashamed of. I’ve never had a tooth-falling-out dream but have the abject pooping dream probably more frequently than any other theme except school. It might be my version of the naked-at-work dream.
My one sort of good serial dream is that I get volunteered for some sort of competition and discover that I’m a natural-- like I can run really well or I’m a born cyclocross bicycle racer and can bunny-hop 3 feet. It’s always something physical like that, which is interesting (I have an academic life, so it’s interesting that my secret unfulfilled desires are athletic).
I wonder why people have the same theme dreams? I mean, the school and poop-anxiety ones I can understand, but the phone dialing dream?
Someone else please admit to having the poop dream. . .
I used to have this dream ALL THE DAMN TIME! The details were different, but the pattern was the same.
My friends/family/tour group/posse are preparing to leave our space station/hotel/underground bunker/shack to go to the big dance/battle/orgy/restaurant. Spirits are running high, so everyone’s atwitter with activity. Finally, all preparations are made and the group piles into our spaceship/van/covered wagon/train. I’m just about to get on board when I suddenly realize I’ve forgotten my 1920’s-style Death ray/raincoat/casserole. “Wait a minute, I’ll be right back!” I yell to my group, who are admonishing me to hurry, or we’re going to miss the human sacrifice/opening band/birthday party. I run back into the yurt/grandma’s house/sex tourture dungeon, but suddenly it’s much bigger and more mazelike than when I left, and my lunchbox/laptop/tricorder isn’t where I left it. I am frantic. I tear the place apart looking for it, but it’s nowhere to be found. This part of the dream goes on for hours. Then, finally, I either find it or decide to go on without it and make do somehow. But when I return to the driveway/spacedock/train station, everyone is gone. Sometimes they leave a note: “We waited and waited, but you didn’t come, so we had to leave.” I then break down and cry uncontrollably.
I had this dream so often I started to recognize it. Now, when I see the telltale signs happening, I stand up in the middle of the dream and yell “This is the dream of being left behind! I want it to stop!” and generally disrupt things until I either wake up find a new dream. But it doesn’t always work. Now when I wake up after having the dream, I honestly feel like I’ve been wasting my time.
Mre recently, I have also had a bathroom dream. Usually, when I have a dream that I have to pee, I really do have to pee and wake up to use the restroom. What I am going to describe isn’t the same. I dream that I am running an errand and I realize that I need to do no. 1 or 2; that is never consistent. I go to the restroom in the store or restaurant (once, I was in a gym) and realize they are filthy, the stalls are not private, and they are arranged in a very abstract way. They have been arranged in mazes, in huge rows 100 feet long, and once simply as toilets in a stair-stepped manner very close together, I mean a foot apart, where I had to step over others to get to an unoccupied seat. Thankfully, the room was empty. All of these times, when I get in the bathroom, I lose the urge to go and look for the quickest way out, only to be prevented by doing so because I forgot where the door is.