I don’t know if I hadn’t rested well enough
or maybe it was the fact that I was using earplugs to block all sounds coming
from my annoying roommates. I had fallen
asleep, like always, almost at three in the morning and wasn’t expecting to
have nothing notable to tell when I woke up. But then, nightmares and dreams
happen and apparently my brain is very active these days.
I
know I had a very active dream first. I don’t really remember what it was about
but I do remember when I woke up, covered in sweat, in the middle of the night.
Something had scared me or made me run because I was panting and sweating and
trying to breath. But, after all, I was still sleepy so I fell asleep again and
that next dream I remember very well.
It happened in an airport, just after I had
arrived from somewhere to Brasilia. I have no idea if it was actually Brasilia.
I have never been there myself but in the dream it was pretty clear that was
the city I was in. I walked around the airport and remembered walking with one
bag and looking at the incredible ceiling of the terminal and thinking that not
so many people used the airport. My subconscious didn’t really add that much
people to the dream, only some background “extras”. I walked a lot on that
airport, watching the stores and just enjoying myself.
Then, after many corridors, I arrived at what
appeared to be a hotel reception. There, there was a woman who checked me in
and joined me to my room, which had all curtains and blinds closed. Somehow, I
didn’t think it was strange or weird in any way. When she left, I immediately
lay down and rested for a while. Then, I noticed that it was actually very
early in the day still and that I had to take advantage of whatever time I had
in the city so I had thought of getting a taxi to take me downtown.
But this I only thought of. Apparently, I
couldn’t’ move from the bed anymore but I really wanted to. I didn’t want to
waste any time of my trip, which was short I guess, but nothing could make my
legs move. I could see the sunlight filtering through the curtains and somehow
that made me even sleepier than I already was.
I fell asleep in a dream and woke up a bit
later, the orange light of the afternoon entering the room. Again, I got worried I was wasting my time in
Brasilia so this time I was able to stand up and go to the bathroom. There, I
washed my face and started thinking that maybe I had no money to pay the hotel
fee. I worried as I checked my bag and went around the room. But then I
remembered I did have money so it wasn’t a problem. Curiously, I thought of a
trip I was going to make in real life, as if the two events had some relation
with the other.
I went back to sitting in bed and thought of
buying a low-cost ticket to Rio and check the city there, doing a favela tour
and taking lots of pictures. But I never got out of the hotel room; I didn’t
seem capable to do so. I woke up slowly, still thinking about the money. I was
sweating a bit and my covers were all around the place. The cold wind of the
night was freezing my feet and I had to fix it all to lie there more
comfortably. It was late and I had cancelled my alarm clock, which I put on
everyday to wake up early to write. I didn’t write a word that day.
That day, a Saturday, I decided to relax
completely. I didn’t do my daily workout either and showered after 1 PM. The
rest of the day was relaxing, except for the fact that an apparently important
football game was going to take place and there was people everywhere,
including my apartment, waiting for it to happen.
Decided to avoid that, I left to have lunch
and then wander around. I ended up exercising after all when I had to walk
eight kilometers to my house just because I wanted to take a stroll by the
ocean, which was covered by greyish clouds and seemed not to be in the right
mood for anyone to come close. I had thought the weather would be better but it
wasn’t. When I got home, my feet hurt and I was tired. That Saturday I fell
asleep pretty late too, even though I was tired. Something always distracts me.
I ended up having another dream. Or maybe it
was a nightmare. It had different stages or levels or whatever you want to call
them but they were all related: it was about me and my father and how we
couldn’t really communicate with each other. We argued about thing I don’t
remember in different locations that had absolutely nothing to do with is. I
think one of them was the former house of my grandfather and another one looked
like a market but one that I had never seen before.
The dream was exhausting. Even being in it, I
could notice my body wasn’t working correctly. I was breathing heavily and I
couldn’t help thinking it was because I seemed to run after my father a lot in
the dream. We moved around the scene like it was a theatre stage and it made me
dizzy but I went on doing it exactly the same way because, somehow, it made
sense that I did it that way.
He was being very harsh with me. He insulted
me in front of other family members and we fought and I wanted him to
understand something but I don’t really remember what that was. And he called
me a failure I think and then I realized I couldn’t speak. I tried very hard
but couldn’t. My face felt drowned and I woke up then.
But when I did, I strangely still dreaming
because I kept talking or, at least, trying to talk. I opened and closed my
mouth and reached for something or someone that wasn’t there and all of this
happened in my bed. I had my eyes opened and I remember it vividly. I fell
asleep right back and then my voice did work and I could speak and tell him
what I felt but he didn’t seem to care about what I had to say. He was so mean
and harsh that, when I woke up for good, I realized he wasn’t really my father.
I had to recover myself from that dream,
trying to slow down my breathing and walking outside to turn off that damn
light the idiots I live with always leave on. When I went back to bed I felt my
back being very wet and I wondered if wearing pajama pants had anything to do
with that. After all, I normally slept in my underwear and without a t-shirt
even and now I was wearing it all. Did that made me dream so much?
It was 7AM, according to my cellphone. I still
had some hours to rest so I decided to try and use them to calm myself down and
breathe easily. I tried to think of places filled with nature and calm and I
remembered two beautiful parks I had been in Amsterdam. Both day I had been
freezing but I always liked to go to places were normal people went instead of
the ones filled with tourists only.
That apparently helped because I fell asleep
for three hours but when I woke up, I gave myself some more minutes to relax,
to keep my eyes closed and to breath in order to calm myself down.
Two nights in a row my brain had given me
reasons to run around and worry and try to solve problems that weren’t there.
Or were they? What did those dreams meant, if they meant anything at all? I’ve
never really bought into all of that psychological shit that says that if you
dream about flying it means something. I don’t think the brain is that smart
But I do think you dream from your memory and it curious why your subconscious
uses certain memories to play around.
Waking up in the middle of the night, or
morning, sweaty and tired, is something that hadn’t happened to me in a while.
Normally I don’t remember what I dream but this time it was like both times I
had actually just been in those places. And maybe they were nightmares but I
have no idea of telling because there wasn’t something obviously scary about
them.
I just decided to write it all down because I
don’t want to forget anything about it. Maybe those dreams will come in handy
one day. Or maybe writing them down will make them go away or at least change.
Who knows?
