I'd Rather Be Dreaming

[JDBar]

I think I spend at least half of my nights lucid dreaming, I never get tired of it. I don't seem to have nightmares, and when I do I find them very amusing. I love experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis. Parts of my dream world are consistent, and others ever-changing. I love the world my mind creates every night. I feel relieved waking up in the middle of the night, because I know I have more time to sleep. It wasn't always like this. I have a really long history with lucid dreaming and hallucinations, but if I were to go that in-depth this post would end up being a novel or something

Long story short, I used to have hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis every night when I was young (4-10, I think). I pretty much had a phobia of sleeping. I used to believe in prayer, because of my Christian parents, so one night I prayed asking to stop dreaming. Well, turns out the placebo effect is pretty awesome, because the hallucinations stopped from there on out for the next 3 years. Then one night I had my first lucid dream, and did some investigating. I was sucked into the world of WILDs and DILDs and everything in between. I became better and better at lucid dreaming, and somehow parts of my dream world have become consistent (architecture, people, holidays even). I love living in the dream world. It's fun, and horrifying at times, but either way it's exciting.

But in the day, everything is drab. Living feels so dull and dead and repetitive and stressful. It's almost always so boring, save for when I'm doing graphics. Every now and then there are things I find I can appreciate. Last night I watched The Secret World of Arrietty with my girlfriend, and we were both quite happy. Then I was depressed, because the immersion was gone and I was back in the real world. I had to worry about whether I did my AP Physics homework for the weekend, and wonder when I should study for my AP US Gov test on Wednesday.

I get very depressed at night for reasons like this, and the only way to pick myself back up is by sleeping and dreaming. In the morning I might be groggy, but I'm usually functional until the afternoon. I used to play a lot of video games, but I've started restricting myself to a couple of hours a week, so that I could be more productive and practice making graphics more. I used to meditate to relax, but it's difficult finding time to do that in public school and at home. And now that I'm 18 and moving out soon, I have a growing pile of worries and problems. People keep asking me to plan things for the long term, I'm simply not that kind of person. I can plan ahead for maybe a year max, and I'm horrified when I hear my friends who have plans for when they're 27. To me that's a thousand years from now.

I love dreaming. I'm depressed when I'm not dreaming. Sometimes I wish I could dream and never wake up. I'm not suicidal or anything dangerous like that; I don't think I believe in an afterlife like that or anything. It just makes me sad how boring real life is compared to the adventures that exist in my own mind at night. And when I take a hard look at what I think consciousness is, to me there isn't much difference from being awake and being asleep. It's all stimuli and perception, and etc. Fundamentally either one could be reality, I think. Being asleep is just as important, but being awake is ten times more awful. The only things that make it worth it are my girlfriend, my graphics, and whatever art and media other people make to immerse me in their world.

I decided to post this here, since nobody I know seems to browse the Emotional Support section on SupportForums. I don't really want people to know I have this addiction to dreaming. You know how schools and parents and people are when someone is depressed. Always getting concerned over the most minute trivial things, offering counseling and maybe even medications. I don't want any of that. I think I want people to leave me alone, but then I'm not sure why I would post this if that was the case. I don't know what I'm looking for. I just feel like I had to put this info down somewhere. I got used to blogging my dreams for a while under the title "Adventures in the Hyperspace" on another community. I'm used to just putting info out there, and I need this info out there. Maybe there's people who can relate.

I'm going to stop ranting. I'll be going to bed soon anyways.

[Crystal]

Its not a good that happens to you.. may be you should consult a doc or something I know u said above that u don't want to do that but this is actually not good... Discuss this with any of your parent with whom you think you are close too... They should guide you right..
Best Wishes for you future..

[JDBar]

Its not a good that happens to you.. may be you should consult a doc or something I know u said above that u don't want to do that but this is actually not good... Discuss this with any of your parent with whom you think you are close too... They should guide you right..
Best Wishes for you future..

Thanks for the kindness. Unfortunately I'm not close to my mom at all, and my father is my enemy. I don't have any connection with my extended family either, for that matter. Doctors would be expensive, and I am strongly against taking medication for these types of things.

[JDBar]

Last night I dreamed I was in the middle of a heavily wooded area. It was gray, and foggy, the classic wooded horror environment. I found myself on the top of a steep slope of mud and branches, which descended into a river. The water was blackened. I looked to my right, and saw a child staring back. He darted away from me, and I chased him. We flew down the slope, I nearly felt like I was going to trip and fall face-first into the ground. He tried to cross the river, but I caught up with him and tackled him into the water. The river was surprisingly deep, I remember being underwater for a moment while I held his face down. His screams sounded absolutely awful, although I took more interest in the bubbles in the water from his thrashing. They were very bright. When his body sank into the water, I got back up and realized there had been a line of children marching through the river the whole time. They didn't seem phased by the death, although some of them did stare at me briefly without stopping. I followed them down-stream, until we reached a tunnel. On one of the tunnel walls was a door, which upon opening I found myself in the kitchen of a restaurant. I think it was a seafood place, which is weird because I don't like seafood. I walked to the front entrance of the restaurant, and saw that it opened up to an amusement park. I met up with my girlfriend here, and we spent a lot of time going on rides. A lot of them were simply over-sized intricate slides. We also shopped around a bit at the gift stores, looking at clothes and stuff. I realized that the authorities were looking for the guy responsible for drowning that child, so I tried not to attract attention to myself. I happened to notice that my father was in the place of one of the cops, even though in reality he's a landscape contractor or something. The dream ended while I was looking at some shirts in a gift shop with my girlfriend. My alarm clock woke me up. I think one of us was drinking a Slushy.

This was the first time I've ever killed someone in a dream.

[Crystal]

Why don't you tell your g/f about his if you feel she truly loves and can share your problems?
I don't know how good that idea might be but take it into considerations..
Its weird you get such dreams.. Trust me its not at all normal... You should do something about it....
My grandmom used to keep a knife under my mattress when I was a kid so that I dont get bad dreams... Maybe that would help? Not sure..

[JDBar]

Why don't you tell your g/f about his if you feel she truly loves and can share your problems?
I don't know how good that idea might be but take it into considerations..
Its weird you get such dreams.. Trust me its not at all normal... You should do something about it....
My grandmom used to keep a knife under my mattress when I was a kid so that I dont get bad dreams... Maybe that would help? Not sure..

I haven't told her, because I don't like her knowing when I'm discontent. I'll probably tell her eventually, there wouldn't really be any cons to that. As for the dreams, the 'scarier' they are, the more I am interested in them. I tend to reverse-engineer the elements of fear in my head. I realized long ago that reality is more frightening than dreams anyways.