To sleep, perchance to dream....

I sat along the pebbled shore
Where no human sound could interfere
As water swelled and waves moved in
The wet and wonderful melodies to my ear.
I listened there for many hours
And drank in all the notes and rhythm streams
And carried them with me to my home
To soothe away the darkness in my dreams.

When I was young, I loved to go to sleep at night because I had “serial” dreams. I would crawl into bed, think about the previous night’s dream and pick up where it left off as I fell asleep. For months, I would weave a long and complicated story in the fabric of my dreams. I always remembered them and kept the good times going from night to night.

Then in college, I had a particularly vivid dream. It was a totally ludicrous story, bright and colorful and very disturbing. I woke up wondering where it came from and told my roomie about it. We laughed as I described the dream to the smallest detail. Several weeks later, I was visiting my then boyfriend in his hometown. The totally ludicrous dream was played out almost verbatim, as I stood there with every hair standing on end. The day after the dream-reality was complete, my boyfriend dumped me in a most unceremonious way…one that brought the meaning of the dream into painful, screaming clarity. It was an incredibly traumatic experience.

After that, I rarely remembered any dreams at all. It was as though a huge steel wall would come slamming down in my head, preventing me from remembering anything that might be painfully prophetic, protecting me from more trauma.

Since that time, I’ve remembered only a handful of dreams. Each of those has been extremely vivid, colorful, and prophetic. I live most days feeling as though I’ve lost a third of my life by not being able to remember my dreams. I think dreams help you solve problems, and they make clear things that are not clear to the conscious mind. I would love to once again be able to remember where I’ve been in my subconscious all night!

I’ve tried all manner of things to lift that steel wall that comes slamming down each night, but to no avail. If you have any suggestions on how to recover my dream life, send them on!