I've always been able to express my thoughts pretty well in writing. Not accounting for typing skills, which produce a fair ammount of typos in many of my articles, I've been given the gift of communication this way. I'm realizing as time goes on that a person can only communicate their realized ideas. I can communicate my thoughts, and writing is a medium I have used to translate emotions into thoughts.
Emotions, to me, are simply thoughts that don't come with words or concepts. Thus learning how to express emotions is a useful skill. Writing has been that skill for me, to a certain extent. When something bothers be or excites me, I write it down and those emotions translate into logical thoughts. The problem is that not all emotions are available to the conscious mind.
I'm not sure how this compares with the experience of others, but I have recurring dreams. Regularly. Since I was seventeen I have been aware of the connection between my dreams and emotions I am unable to express. When I'm under a deeper emotional stress, I dream about it, I believe, because my conscious mind is either unaware of the effects of that stress, or is unable to express it. When i say deeper emotional stress, I don't mean daily life stress. From my understanding, the type of stress that influences my dreams is often a singular event that impacts my life.
For example, the reason and inspiration for this article, as noted by the title. My desire to write about this (again) is because its been about a year since i stopped having "Laura's Recurring Nightmare" as I call it. Many of my dreams are recurrent, especially the ones that have a big impact on me. Usually if a dream represents something important enough to be recurrent, its a nightmare.
In June of last year I got an email saying that Laura, the young woman i had been intending on marrying, wanted to end any friendship that we had. Without going into more detail on this well worn story, I never really was told why or given any reason for this. One week things were fine, more than fine you could say, the next week my heart had been ripped away. The same night as that email, a series of dreams began which I later took to calling "Laura's Recurring Nightmare". Not much for creativity on that one, I know.
The dream itself was actually rather simple. I woke up more times than i can count screaming and crying "WHY??!" Not nessesarily verbally screaming, but in my mind. That was the dream. No images, nothing going on, just me screaming in "WHY?!" in my dream (once or twice outloud, in my sleep I was later informed). THe emotional pain that went with those screams I can still remember. I remember the devastation in my heart.
I mention that, not because I still have those dreams or feel that pain; like I said its been nearly a year since that dream has stopped recurring. What makes that dream interesting to me is that outside of the recurring dream and pain therein, there was no other manifestation of this emotion in my life. Less that a month after I got that email, I was back at school, living my life normally. During my waking hours, I was fine. I was shocked at how quickly I had recovered from the heartbreak, but my dreams told a different story. The only time I had any noticeable reaction to the loss was in my sleep, where my emotions, the ones I couldn't express and didn't even know were there during the day, came out violently. It was the only emotion i really had, and I couldn't feel it any other way. Overtime I stopped feeling altogether, and became a hateful jerk to my classmates, which eventually led me to leave school because I couldn't handle it.
Once again, the dreams I have that stay with me are representations of things I can't express any other way. Perhaps now I can verbally explain the depth of "Laura's Recurrent", but at the time it was lost on me. Now I am in the midst of another series of recurrent dreams. These are not nightmares.
Recently the dream has been of Laura again. My waking mind hardly ever thinks about her, or what happened last year. I know that I would probbably ignore her and many of the friends that are associated with her if we were to meet again. Things will never go back. I don't want Laura ever again, but I want reclamation of the memories we had. But once again, my dreams tell a different story that my waking emotions.
In the new dream, I see her in a place that is familiar. INCH, Verity, Ren Fair, Horrocks, and other such places of "importance". Its just a moment, but i see her, just her face, and I say "I'm sorry." I'm not sure if I really am sorry, or just want there to be some kind of reconciliation in the dream, but thats what happens. What do I make of it? I'm not sure. My logical, waking mind can't process it in any coherent way. But its what the dream is. Maybe in a few months I'll understand.
Links to previous posts about my dreams and nightmares (Cir. 2008):
The Meaning of Dreams
Oneirophobia
*Note, these are very childish and badly written posts, but they are examples of past recurrent dreams.
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