Panicky Dreams

Do your eyes ever sting - maybe b/c you are having a horrific allergy day - and you want to open them but you can barely keep them open, because of the stinging and because of your body's natural reactive instinct to keep them closed?

In my dream, every time I was driving a car my eyes would begin stinging, and then I could not get my eyes to open, and the car would be moving. And I would smoothly depress the brake, b/c before my eyes closed I had seen a stop sign just ahead. And so I would be estimating exactly where to stop the vehicle, so it would be stopped at the stop sign. Except, as I got very close to a full stop, the brakes would not hold and bring the car down to a full stop. So, then, with eyes stinging shut, blindly estimating where I needed to stop, with a car which would not make the final stop, I would be shoving the brake pedal down to the floor, and still the car would be sliding forward past the point where I estimated it should stop. Later in the dream, I would drive again, and the same thing would happen. I had the eyes stinging/no brakes problem on at least three separate drives during my dream.

Then the car disappeared completely. I walked and looked and looked for the car. It was not where I had left it. I considered walking about a half mile, to another place I might've left the car, except I really knew it wasn't there, except it also wasn't where I really knew it was. It must've been stolen. Then I stumbled across the car. It had been sold to an auto wholesaler from Kansas. It was awaiting transport to that state.

Finally(this isn't the last of the dream, but it's the last which is interesting enough to retell), I was sitting in a chair on a smooth warehouse floor, and the chair began gliding smoothly around the floor, as if slightly electrified. The chair slid me around mostly backwards, but not always. I was mostly backwards, but also gently revolving as I slid. I could slightly control the direction of the chair via positioning my feet on the ground, like a rudder; yet I could not stop the chair from smoothly gliding about the floor, and gently knocking into walls, which I would then gently push away from. But I could not stop the chair. I didn't especially want to stop the chair, yet I kind of wanted to stop it, and could not. It wanted to glide, and it could not be stopped. I had customers at the warehouse. They watched me glide, and wondered if it was some type of trick. Finally, I got out of the chair and exited the warehouse. The customers grabbed it and sat in it. I exited before I saw whether or not they were able to glide around.

Let the amateur dream interpretations begin. The interpretations have already begun in my head. I have to constantly tamp my own interpretations down, and remind myself I don't know jack about the significance of dreams, or even if there is any significance which can be interpreted - which I don't really too much think there is - but maybe there is.

Random, final additional dream detail: I was visiting with two women who were office assistants of a business client. I was standing on the ground. They were sitting in the bed of a pick up truck. One told a story of the other being in flagrante delicto with her fiancee, then, suddenly, apropos of nothing, she screamed at her fiancee: "Don't you lie to me!" "Wow", I said to the screamer, "that is kinda scary." The storyteller looked at the screamer and agreed: "Yeah." The screamer hung her head in shame, and, sort of, in bewilderment about whatever had come over her during that screaming moment. She stared at the bed of the pick-up truck, and she said "I know."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All the above dreaming happened the same night: Wed night, March 5.

I have, I suspect, compared to other people, relatively few nightmares(that I can remember, anyway). I often go for what seems like months without remembering any nightmares. But, when I have nightmares, I seem to have them in bunches. At these times, maybe b/c I have tension or something in my life, I will have a string of days or weeks when, on many mornings, I can remember having had panicky dreams during the previous night. I'm currently in one of those strings of lots of panicky dreams.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Addendum: One more recent panicky dream

I'm jogging, up in some residential hilly mountainous deserty area, and I almost jog straight off a cliff. I catch myself just in time. So I turn right, and jog along the edge of the cliff, and I notice a mountain lion stalking me, moving in closer and closer, and quite rapidly. There's a house ahead. I sprint to the house, leap over the porch fence thingy, and bang on the door and ring the bell and shout to please let me in. But the mountain lion is preparing to leap onto the porch. I grab a patio chair to defend myself. The mountain lion leaps ... and it not a mountain lion, but a big tomcat. A big, pissed off tomcat which is attacking me. I fend if off with the patio chair. It's a pretty good fight between the two of us, and I am quite panicked, and my adrenaline is high. Then a lady opens the door, and the tomcat leaps off the porch and runs away.

And that's my panicky dream. Almost jogged off a cliff; attacked by a semi-domestic cat. Panicked as heck. Sometimes my nightmares are embarrassingly wimpy. Yet, they still scare me as they happen. I'm not complaining, really. I prefer a domestic cat nightmare to a scary monster nightmare.