Weird and Wonderful...

Weird and wonderful dreams aren’t exactly a new theme in my life. They come and go in cycles… some seasons quiet, some completely off their rocker. I have learned not to be too surprised anymore. But every now and then, I wake up and think… okay, that was a bit “extra”, even for me, lol! This morning was one of thoooose!

The kettle had barely finished boiling before my mind was already trying to piece things together. I stood there stirring my coffee, remembering bits and pieces from the dream-labyrinth I’d been through. Honestly, if that’s the kind of filing my subconscious reckons needs sorting out, then we’ve got bigger problems than I thought, lol! I actually laughed out loud at one point. Not in a “haha that was funny” way, but more of a “what the actual fudgesickle was that?” sort of laugh.

Dreams have always fascinated me. Not in the sense of analysing every little symbol with a magnifying glass… although I do love a bit of that when it feels right, but just the whole idea of how our minds carry on without us while we’re asleep. Sorting, filing, working through things we didn’t even realise we were holding. Sometimes it’s just nonsense. But other times, it feels like there’s something being said, a definite “message” being delivered and we just haven’t quite learned the language yet.

As a teen, I was completely fascinated by the dream world, so it was a topic I explored quite deeply. I never needed dream interpretation explained to me after that. I knew enough to recognise the way our brains try to push something to the surface, even if it doesn’t come out looking like it should.

After my mom died, I went through a long stretch of dreaming about her almost every night. But not in a way that was comforting. She always looked completely wrecked. Tired, broken, even smelt bad in some of them, which was unpleasantly weird. It made the grief feel heavier, as if night-time was no break from the weight of it. It took months for that to stop and I have a handful of thoughts for what that was all about.

Last night’s dream was a mashup of scenes that felt like short stories all stitched together with no real thread. One moment I was flying, the next I was dodging some unknown presence, the next I was giving myself little pep talks like I was my own sidekick. And… I was kind of nailing it, haha!

The flying part stuck with me the most though. I don’t get those dreams often, but when I do, they always leave a little charge in the air the next day. It wasn’t the floaty type where you suddenly find yourself mid-air just wafting around aimlessly - this was different. Structured. I had to lift myself off the ground, intentionally, with full mental focus. I was standing still, then said something like “right, let’s go Jayne,” and just rose. There was effort in it. Control. Direction. And I also had to master the landing too, as my feet came to hit the floor… which felt like a whole other skill on its own. It’s a little difficult to explain accurately, but it felt less like a dream and more like some kind of memory or something… from somewhere else. Like my subconscious was running a simulation, lol!

There was something… or someone, behind me in the dream. I never saw it, but I felt it. You know the feeling I am talking about… “cold on the back of your neck” feeling. I turned around, said “no, go away,” and proceeded to lift myself into the air. I’ve actually had that exact flying dream before… not the message or setting, but the process. That same mental lift-off, the same intention behind it. Maybe it’s a reminder of something I already know how to do.

In general, I try not to get too wrapped up in the “analysing” because it can begin to feel like a riddle with no solution. Sometimes I just sit with them for a while and see if anything obvious comes to mind. Sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s fine. I’ve learnt to let it go if it’s not offering anything right away. The strange thing is, the bits that do matter often return later, casually, when I’m not even thinking about it. Mid-laundry. Driving. Or out of nowhere, days later, while I’m standing in the kitchen again.

The mind’s clever like that. Always working, always speaking… even when we don’t quite understand the dialect. Anyway, I don’t really have a tidy conclusion to this one. Just a pocket full of strange dream fragments and that flying moment I keep circling back to.

It’s got me thinking though, about how much we carry beneath the surface… how often we’re moving through things we haven’t even named yet. Maybe we all do that more than we realise. Maybe we’re all somewhere in-between ground and sky, quietly trying to lift ourselves. And some nights, we do…