no one brings me down like you do

I had an awful argument with my mom yesterday. I felt so terrible that after crying hard, I threw up and inadvertently skipped lunch. I then spent the rest of the afternoon questioning myself and being fearful. Then I skipped dinner and fell asleep.

I had a weird dream about a boy my age; I don’t recall who he was. It was raining and foggy, and we were walking through a place that resembled Tagaytay: empty houses spaced far apart from one another, except there were many rocks and the landscape was somewhat crag-like. We broke into one of the houses and tracked mud and grass from outside, I didn’t care. We ran through it, looking for the back door, when I heard a door open or close, and then suddenly it wasn’t just me and the boy anymore, but there were other people with us tracking mud and grass through the house. So we ran, I ran, to a window that lead to a porch and I climbed through it and climbed down the porch and dropped down onto the grass and ran again. Then, I was with the boy, but it was night now, and we were on the road that leads to my subdivision from the highway. It was lit and I dreamed of it as it was in real life, but then wouldn’t it be better if it was a walkway instead? And it became a walkway, and we walked down it, then my dream shifted and I wasn’t with the boy anymore, I was somewhere else in a different dream.

In the second dream, it was night again and I was under a flyover with a bunch of other people. There was an explosion, and I ran, then I saw what caused it: two Transformers fighting, and an important person was there so the people ushered him away to safety. But then the Autobot was killed and suddenly there were Decepticons around, so everyone froze in fear, I froze and looked around for someone I knew, and I saw someone; but I don’t really know him, it was just that in the dream he was someone I knew. They gathered us together and asked us where the important person was and we didn’t know, I shied away from the question. But then for some reason I suddenly knew where he was; he was hiding near the Burger King around the corner, and I needed to tell that person I knew, but then Barricade saw me looking at this person intently and he told me to walk with him, which I did. He told me he was going to kill me if I didn’t tell him the location of the important person, but now I was calm and I wasn’t scared. I walked with him and Megatron joined us and I walked with them like they were people, even though they’re supposed to be giant robots, and they talked between themselves in my presence. They touched me on the shoulders and on the waist while they threatened me but I didn’t care. They left me and I signaled to the person I knew the whereabouts of the important person, then walked away, down a corridor lined with embellished gravestones and memorial plaques, running my fingers across the engraved fonts and over the embossed figurines, to the outside of a Church, where I sat.

I still feel tired and terrible and afraid, and yet very stupid and naive.

inception-ish

I dreamed that, as I was about to talk to Pepito about a dream of mine, I realized I was dreaming and woke up; but woke up into another dream.

boxes

Dream:

- a warehouse full of different types of boxes
- a car lot on a rainy night with my dad; a white building and a white fence
- a water spout on land and running away from a tornado
- the living room; dark, and ‘our house in the province’

fish

I dreamed of fish again, last night. They crowded the wall in tiny glass aquariums, in a dark room where the shimmering water cast its light onto me, and onto the floor. Silver and gold, they were like floating coins in my eyes; payment for the ferryman.

the dark tower

In a dream, we climbed up and down the stairs of a dark tower. There were no lights, or floors, no windows, only landings and the endless red railing. You held the flashlight. Up and down we went, looking for the children. Up and down, up and down. But we didn’t find them. Thank god.

to the paper owl in my dream

I was really happy you took a liking to me. I’m sorry you weren’t real, but it felt like you were, didn’t it?

‘please stop’

When I was in high school, I noticed that I was able to remember some of my dreams vividly and with great detail. Before then, I rarely ever dreamed, or maybe I never really noticed them. They were strange and often made no sense whatsoever. I thought that, maybe they meant something, but eventually I dropped that idea. I didn’t feel anything in my dreams; no emotions or textures or sensations. It was like watching a movie; I was there, but I wasn’t involved. There was still a sense of distance between me and what was happening around me. After a while, I stopped remembering my dreams (or stopped dreaming, whichever). When they came back a year or so later, they were different. I started to have nightmares. Sometimes I would be in life or death situations. Other times I would be running away from someone, someone who wanted to hurt me or rape me or kill me. Suddenly, I could feel the tiredness of running, and the panic of not running fast enough. I once had a dream where I killed myself; I stabbed myself in the chest. I could feel blood flowing out of my body, my breath becoming short and my fingers going numb. I could feel myself go cold. I felt myself die.

It felt so real. And I could see it clearly, in my mind’s eye. The realness of it would transfer to my waking life. I would wake up feeling tired, feeling terrified, as if I had been running all night when I had been in bed the whole time. I had the nightmares for about a year or two, then they stopped.

Eventually, I started to dream again, the nightmares mostly gone. These days, I often dream of myself in situations I would rather not be in; no longer involving death, but still unpleasant nonetheless. The realness is still there; visually and emotionally. The feelings still transfer into my waking life. In my dreams, I’m but a spectator in my body. I act upon impulses and thoughts that aren’t my own, yet I feel everything. I find comfort in the fact that I know that the situations I dream up wouldn’t happen in real life, but I want to take control of my dreams. I want to fight. I want to resist.

This is my body.