Dreaming Of The Past, and Looking Forward To The Future

I am one of those people that have vivid dreams that are colorful, lifelike, and so full of emotion.  I have
written about my dreams before on this blog. At first, I was hesitant, but then I am thinking...how could I leave off such a vibrant part of my mind?  How can I write about my experiences while leaving behind a big part of me?  My dream state sometimes is so real that I can't hardly tell the difference between awake, and a dream.  I don't know if this is due to my Asperger's that my brain is wired to express itself in such amazing description inside of my imagination while I sleep.  I don't know if it may be because my emotive state is so stifled while I am awake that it must express itself while I am unconscious.  It could be any of those things, but I do believe that having different way of thinking is a huge contribution to dreaming with such voracity.
Namely, those that think in pictures such as autistics, dyslexics, and people with ADHD have more active, vivid dreams.  That I have read about more than once, and have noticed when talking with people that have those differences. Dyslexics are the most prone to a vivid dream life so full of color and imagination that it's awesome to hear them describe it.  It is not uncommon for them to be movie directors, and producers, as they have such a storytelling ability that comes naturally to their busy, creative minds.

Unfortunately, for me.. I am not really what one might call creative.  My dreams are almost never happy.  I can easily count on one hand the amount of happy, or wishful dreams that I have had in my entire life.  It is less than five, to be sure.  My dreams tend to be realistic, everyday stuff.  Sometimes, they're scary, but mostly they're sad, or just ordinary.  It's like extending my awaking to sleeping.  My mind don't like fantasy books, or movies, and I suppose this carries itself over to my dreams.

Sometimes, my dreams will have meanings in them that I miss while I am awake.  I don't mean odd meanings like hidden messages from dead people or anything supernatural.  I mean, feelings and thoughts that I had not worked out, or expressed in waking hours. 

The other night I dreamt that I was in this old mansion.  It was expansive.  The owner was a beautiful woman who lived an unhappy life.  Most of this part of the dream was in faded gray tones, kinda black and white.  I walked through this house with this woman. It was old, unkept, and dark.  Things would suddenly spring from hidden places, and closets were scary, and full of unknowns.  She was a frightened being, waif thin, yet worried over her weight.  Her attractiveness was obscured by the house's darkness.  She spent so much time worrying over what might be around any corner, and what just happened to even be able to live a life of productivity. This was a sad life, and I felt relief to get out of that masnsion.

In that same dream there was this house that was down the road.  It a huge house with vibrant colors, and a lovely yard full of greenery, and flowers.  It was sunny, and bright over that house, in stark contrast to the other one, which was gray, and dark.  This house had a happy, peaceful feeling that emanated from it. I don't recall being able to enter it. I wanted to, but couldn't.  I had not earned it.  I could only dream of what kind of person lives in that house.  Successful, and confident.  One that had reached their ambitions.  Someone who let the light shine in. My house, the one that I resided in, was in between the distance between the houses.  It was on a road, and resembled one in which I had lived in about 6 yrs ago.  It was modest. It was not dark, but not quite radiating rainbows like the house on the hill.

In most dreams we have, everything in it is us. Meaning, it's not about others, but rather almost everything that we see, and every character is a part of us.  Things like houses, are especially representations of yourself.  This dream was of no exception. The meaning was fairly clear to me after I took a moment to think about it.  The dark house full of anxiety was most definitely me.  A side of me, that maybe was more in the past than now.  That side of me can come out from time to time, but it isn't any longer prevalent. I have learned to calm my anxieties, and not be so afraid of everything in my environment.  I have learned to somewhat control my eating disorder issues.  I have somewhat learned to successfully stop trying control every little thing in my world for fear of being out of routine, or out of control.  In the same vain, I have not made it to the happy house on the hill. I am in between, but on the path to it.  I thought this dream was really representative of the two different extremes that I can go to, and a reminder to keep on with positive endeavors, as the other extreme leads to a life of misery.

As I napped today, I had a dream where all I remember was leaving a store, and instead of me getting into the driver's seat of the van it was my daughter.  She is technically old enough to be driving with a restricted license, though we haven't gotten that taken care of yet.  Anyway, she drove just fine, and and I turned to look in the back, and Bubby was a teenager.  It was a sinking feeling as I realized that CJ was all grown up.  She was an adult now. At this point, I remembered how I thought that just yesterday she was eagerly coming out of her room to show me a drawing she did, or a funny picture she found on the internet. Sometimes, I would think about how I just want a minute to myself, and I did not appreciate those times when she wanted to share with me, and now she had no interest in it.  Now, she was grown up, and had other things to do rather than share little thoughts, and whims with me. Now, I wished I had not brushed her off so much. In the dream I thought about how I should have cherished those moments, because they are closing.  I awoke with a heavy heart, and a vow to appreciate those small moments more with my kids.