Lucid Dreaming in a Lucid Dream

I had a rough night last night. Well, to be more honest, I had a rough night early this morning.

Allow me to preface this all with a little backstory. Last week, I didn't get my monkey ass to bed until at least 1:00 every night. I was up either doing research for this book that I'm starting, or I was playing a game, or I was having the sex (it's what married people do, sometimes). And then I was up at 7:00 every morning. In college, this was fine. However, I graduated from college eleven years ago (to the day, in fact), ergo, this is not fine.

This has all added up and now I'm pretty fricking exhausted.

Last night, I went to bed at midnight. And I was okay, mostly. I fell asleep and stayed asleep, which is something that doesn't happen to me much. It was a good, crisp night, good for snuggling up to the already warm form of my wife and sleeping the night away.

Unfortunately, I woke up around 5:00 this morning. My wife gets up at 4:20 and smokes a big bowl to get ready for the opening shift at work. For whatever reason, I woke up at 5:00, through no fault of hers (though the light on downstairs was a wee bit distracting), and I stayed awake. Worse, I began to have one of those senses of dread and doom that have been plaguing me lately, where my guts tie themselves up into knots and I feel like there is some darkness lurking over my shoulders, waiting to fall on me at any moment.

Finally, I was able to fall back asleep. And that's when the dreams began.

I was back home in my house in Indiana where I grew up. I was trying to get my brother and my sister ready for school, and I got in my car and drove out of the back of the yard and went down an alley that led to a side street. As I got toward the end of the alley, where I was expecting there to be a sharp left turn that takes me down toward the river, I found an elementary school on the right-hand side of the street and then a huge Catholic Church that was all lit up with sodium lamps, giving it that amber color. It was suddenly night.

My little town had neither a Catholic Church nor an elementary school. Nor did it suddenly become night in the middle of the morning. I knew something wasn't right.

I saw a sign for interstate 44. Somehow, I knew that I was in Oklahoma. I was driving around, and I was suddenly on some interstates, but I knew this wasn't right. I shouldn't have been able to go from Indiana to Oklahoma without...a few states popping up in between. So, I knew it must be a dream.

I even announced this aloud in my dream. Knowing that I needed to wake up, I started commanding the dream to do things for me. I tried to sprout wings from my shoulder blades like an angel, but to no avail. I always try various ways of flying in my lucid dreams--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Also, I try to command people to be naked in my dreams. This works a lot more often than the flying.

As I was driving along, a police officer began to chase me, but I eluded him somehow--maybe he was after someone else. I do remember making a few turns to try and elude him, and it was, perhaps, the slowest police chase in history. Finally, I pulled over and made myself wake up...

...and I was in my house this time, in North Carolina. But, I was still trying to get my brother and sister ready for school. And Carrie Fisher was there. A young Carrie Fisher, from the Blues Brothers/Princess Leia days.

Also, there were all these cars parked in my driveway and in my yard. I looked out and saw that a large group of people had gathered to dismantle my neighbors' houses. Two of them were being pulled apart, piece-by-piece. I was going to call my wife at work and ask her if she knew anything about it, but I knew that I had to get my brother and sister ready. So, I turned around to get in the shower and noticed that the dresser was gone in my bedroom. And the toilet was gone in my bathroom. The bathtub was full of stuff, and I was trying to clean it out. That's when Carrie Fisher showed up and I asked her for help getting my brother and sister dressed and to tell the people tearing down my neighbors' houses to get out of my house, there was nothing wrong with it.

That's when the sink and the vanity disappeared in my bathroom and there were people down in my kitchen taking out the dishwasher and all the pots and pans. I yelled for them to get out, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was dreaming once more. So, I tried to command my dream, and for a second, I had it. Once I had control of the dream, I began putting the missing things back where they belonged and got the tub cleaned out. Then, mercifully, I was able to wake up.

I laid there for a few moments, hoping that I was finally, really awake. I heard some banging around and, for a moment, was terrified that the dream about the people taking all my stuff had returned. Fortunately, I realized that it was just my daughter getting ready for school. The alarm went off and I rolled over to turn it off, then laid there in bed for a few moments trying to calm my mind and organize my thoughts for the day.

It was not easy. My mind is always a wreck when I go through a series of dreams like this because the vividness of the dream was enough to make it seem as though it was a true substitute for reality. Finally, I got up and started the day, managing to get my kids ready for school without driving to Oklahoma.

I don't know what it was that touched me off this morning. Maybe it was because I walked by the melatonin at Kroger and thought about picking up a bottle, just for shits and giggles, and this was my mind's way of warding me off from it. I don't know. I just know that I don't want to drive from Indiana to Oklahoma like that ever again.