For me, there are two types of terrible dreams:
a) The first is the obvious, nightmares where terrible things happen and I wake up literally sweating, heart racing, etc
b) The other is where there’s a happiness that is near-absolute, usually involving somebody who loves and accepts me completely. Those dreams are generally pretty simple, but waking up is like stepping out from a warm house into a cold night, and wishing I could go back only to find the door shut behind me.
An old story on Reddit, could have come from other sources, about the guy who had a whole life, career, wife, kids, and one night at a party or something he noticed a light was flickering wrong. Looked closer at it to figure it out, woke up.
I don’t believe I ever posted my story but as someone with a similar experience it absolutely crazy what dreams can do to you.
In my case I mwt a highschool sweetheart we traveled the world only to come back to where we met when we were young. My realization of it being fake was that it was a fall day in my dream. I couldn’t hear leaves rustling even though they were there. I woke up not long after that.
The girl in question was someone I never even went to school with. Redhead with freckles and was oddly somewhat taller than me. When it was over there was just this sense of longing.
Truee, let me try to find it
It’s fine. I’ll see them in another life, when we’re both cats…
You ever wonder if that other person was real too and they had the same dream somewhere else in the world?
Nope nope nope
Used to then found them. Real version is more complex but definitely real and good. Worth sticking around for.
I think it’s a good idea, trying to find them. Just be aware that pursuing the new dream often entails giving up many that came before, then growing from scratch many new parts of your self, which is often difficult and painful.
I’ve had this happen twice and the effect is so profound, I still think about both of them from time to time.
No, because I was so incredibly lucky to have found my perfect partner over a decade ago… no dream person can come close. I don’t, for a single day, take them for granted.
Lucky bastard.
Dammit, I was just talking about this a few weeks ago on lemmy, and it was surprising how many other people have had this happen, and how hard it can be to grieve the loss of that dream life
Ah, the roy videogame from Rick and Morty
Yup
That’s the plot behind Lorna Shore’s album “Pain Remains”: The narrator realises they’re lucid dreaming, takes control of the dreamscape, shapes an alternate reality to become lost in, crafts a lover for themselves… then at some point painfully realises that lover is nothing more than a mirage, fading away:
A wrinkle in time
Take what is left of my life
Before you go
Show me what it’s like to finally know
The face behind the silhouette
In this world I made to be infinite
But within the expanse, I finally see
A world without you isn’t meant for meWhere do you go when I close my eyes?
What do you see looking back at me?
Am I just a ghost just like you?
Caught between the seams of two intertwining melodiesAt this point, the narrator remembers? understands? that it’s just a dream and they - the Ego of this dream - will disappear along with it, agonises over this existential crisis of their own unreality, the memory of that “life”, mourning the loss of that love and finally decides to destroy the dream-world along with themselves:
I’ll salt the earth in a crimson blaze
The world will burn in my fall from grace
Witness the death of God, hear the Devil’s choir
As I leave the stage in a sea of fireIt’s freaky waking up and seeing my wife next to me. Like, I didn’t choose to make those decisions.
Final Fantasy X
No, I can never get into a deep enough sleep to dream.
I had that dream when I wasn’t even a teenager.
A few decades later I still remember that dream clearly.
This morning I had a dream that was the exact opposite.
I woke up and the first words out of my mouth were “what the fuck was that? I do not want to go back there”
