Lucid Dreaming

The PTSD I have experienced since the age of ten has in many ways altered my perceptions.  I also was gifted with an abnormal body chemistry due to dioxin-based farm chemicals of the 1970s that have since all been banned.  Being on edge and paranoid all the time because of what might happen if you wander into the shadows or go into a public bathroom alone where other, bigger people might be lurking…  You know there are real monsters out there.  And a hyperactive imagination can make you start seeing things that aren’t really there.  You may also be plagued by night terrors and nightmares.

No child should ever have some of the dreams I have had. 

Being stalked by a huge duck with human dentures in his monstrous mouth…  Toys that play with their owner… 

Walking skeletons that you saw for the first time in Ray Harryhausen’s movie Jason and the Argonauts, but chase you around the winter streets of Rowan, Iowa in early February, seeking to separate you from body parts… And you are naked in the snow…

Sentient pumpkins taking control of your relatives and attempting to make them judge you and send you to Hell…

But I learned from monster dreams early in childhood that all you need to do is realize that you are dreaming.  If you know it is a dream, you can take control of everything in the dream.  I learned to explode vampires and walking skeletons with finger guns that shot lasers, explosive bullets, or disintegration rays.

I not only saved myself by blowing up dream monsters, I learned to deal with those embarrassing school dreams.  If I had to stand naked in front of Mr. Lyon’s seventh-grade Math Class, I could make everybody else in the room naked too.  Starting with big old Kevin, the class bully.  Dang!  The girls too.  Some of them screamed and tried to cover themselves.  A lot of them, though, sat there like that and giggled at each other.

Examining yourself naked in the mirror of your dreams makes it possible to realize every advantage and vulnerability that you possess.  I learned the depths and power of my imagination.  I could weave dreams into stories where I was the creator of the plot.  It was better than real life… even if it started out as a nightmare.