my morningmares...

Planes falling out of the sky in pieces- flames everywhere... cars by the hundreds just diving off the highway as the roads crumble beneath them... petrified, sprinting citizens screaming and flailing with terror as they make their way down abandoned roads in a maddening crowd- dodging pieces of debris... how'd you like to wake up to that??

I hate the morningmare. I do get nightmares but more often it's around 5 am that I am stricken with fear and forced awake by my own racing heart. I look around the room, check the clock, shift positions and slow my pulse - sometimes I walk around the house to break the possibility of heading right back into that dream. I have more night/morningmares than I do regular "oddball" dreams. It's rarely a unicorn dancing through a field of wildflowers while Ozzy Osbourne sings Mr. Crowley off in the distance. I tend to dredge up murderers, tornadoes, tidal waves and the ever popular driving off a bridge or cliff into the ocean - which - just so you know - is absolutely terrifying. I have had the 'pleasure' of remembering an average of 5 dreams per week for as long as I can recall. My brother will attest to my annoying 'dream-telling' even back when I was 7 or 8 yrs old. And that was vampires in a supermarket. I sort of remember it still.

This plane-raining dream was hands down one of the most frightening ones to date. I was with my mother and grandmother - location, unclear - when we began to notice shiny objects rapidly falling from the sky. We saw people gathering and quickly making the decision to run for their lives. The three of us did our best to outrun massive pieces that had broken apart from what seemed like hundreds of 747s. The location at that point was Airport Road - a long stretch of road appropriately named for its proximity to the airport. With my 88 year old grandmother in tow - we ran as hard as we could to avoid the flaming obstacle. Horror. Next scene, my mom and I are in a huge building - possibly an airport, very modern and cold with large concrete beams and pillars, tons of escalators and stairwells. I lost track of my grandmother and sadly, we feared the worst. Things seemed calmer now. We made our way to a military escort outside, hopped in the vehicle and started driving. Almost immediately we were met with hundreds of cars coming from all directions - much like arrows aimed at a target the size of the Grand Canyon. There was no where to go. We ran from the vehicle trying to hold hands so as not to lose each other- screaming and crying in a cloud of complete chaos. It was the end of the world. I woke up shaking with my heart racing so fast I practically had to have a yoga session right there in my bed. I calmed down by reaching over to see if Brody was on the bed. Surprisingly, I was comforted by his familiar fur and the horror faded. 

There really is no point to this story - just a simply narrated dream. It is not the way I choose to start my day - let that be known. 

I have read that "It is perfectly normal for a person to dream 4 or 5 times a night. When you sleep you go through cycles of sleep. Each cycle lasting on avg. 90 minutes. At the end of each cycle you would have a dream. Your first dream being your shortest 5 to 20 min, and your last being the longest, about 60 min." But who really knows why certain people always remember their dreams and others never do. Either way, I find dreams to be fascinating and at the same time horrifying. I think I'm due for a happy, floating on a cloud, sunshiny, lollipop filled, rainbow dancing dream any day now.