my_daroga | meta dreaming

Oh god, that was awful. Let me tell you about it!

Sometimes, when I fall asleep during the day, I have terrible dreams that usually consist of not being able to wake up. Yes, I dream about being asleep. It sounds very boring, until you realize that the entire time I'm asleep/dreaming I'm trying desperately to wake up. The whole dream is based around this.

So today, I was reading on the couch and had a bit of a headache--this is the real part, not the dream yet--and thought that since Mr. Daroga would be home soon, it'd be okay to just take a little nap. I dreamed that I'd fallen asleep on the couch while watching Dario Argento's Phantom of the Opera. This is logical since I'm in a roleplay where my Erik has had sex with the Persian and given birth to Julian Sands--that's also real, not dream, by the way. Anyway, I was watching the movie (in the dream) but I realized at one point that I was actually asleep, or at least had my eyes closed, so everything that had happened I'd made up. And then I was thinking, "hey, I should remember this, because it's actually quite cool and frankly better than the actual movie."

I really wish I *did* remember, because it was incredibly screwed up. It involved an actual copy of the Leroux novel and the haunting of a girl by the shady-hot Julian Sands character. And lots of gory death.

So next in the dream, Mr. Daroga comes home and I saw hi and get up to take the movie out of the player, remembering once again that my cool version of the movie didn't exist, and I turned to him and said, "Wait. I'm still asleep. You have to help me wake up."

He didn't know what I was talking about, but he came over and held me and started talking to me, I dunno if it was meant to break me out of the dream-state or not. I'm not sure if I thought he was real and I was dreaming, or if I knew he wasn't but couldn't address the real world to wake me up. Because of course he wasn't actually there.

See, my bad dreams commonly take this form, which I've discovered is called sleep paralysis. Lots of people report negative sensations; I always get Mr. Daroga coming home and talking to me and me not being able to respond. It's very very real. Because in my dream/paralyzed state, I'm in exactly the same place I am in real life. So it's very difficult to tell whether I'm dreaming or not. And someone will come in and talk to me and I just can't open my eyes or respond.

Anyway this time it devolved (or maybe evolved) into a dream about the Young Ones, who were all together to do some show and I was in an audience and nearly everyone had come in fours dressed as the characters. Yay.

Then Mr. Daroga really came home and I woke up. But I was very disoriented and upset. And I still am, which is why if you read this and it doesn't make sense, that's why.

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Whoa. That really is freaky. It sounds frankly terrifying D:

I'm in a roleplay where my Erik has had sex with the Persian and given birth to Julian Sands

...but that sounds dementedly awesome.

Yes. It is. I hate it. Every time it happens, it's enough to keep me from going to sleep during the day; but then I get tired again. :(

...but that sounds dementedly awesome.

It is, especially when you consider the weird freaky attraction the full-grown, fully evil son has for the father. Er, mother.

I've got the same thing. It's really disturbing and I'm cranky and upset for hours afterwards.

I'm sorry; yes, it's really disorienting. Does it happen only at specific times, or can you get it during regular sleep?

I don't get it very often, and before now I haven't thought about keeping track of when/how.

Well, if it happens again (and let's hope it doesn't), try to remember the circumstances. Just to see if there's a pattern.

I had a similar experience, but only once- I woke up at about 6:30 (perfectly normal), and then dozed for while until it was late. My mother was yelling at me (Get up! You're late!) and there was all the normal hectic morning bustle. And then I woke up. It was 4 AM, and pitch black.

And that's the second-weirdest dream I've ever had. The weirdest one involved aliens, but they weren't the scary part.

Yeah. For me, the creepy part is that I can't function; my body won't respond to my mind.

This sounds spookily like me! I've had very similar dreams, though mine have usually involved a version of the Robert Englund movie rather than the Argento/Sands one, but quite often also involve the book (or a book I discover Leroux wrote in which he offered all his proof that Erik was real). And I often have the sensation in them that the version I'm dreaming is really awesome and I wish I could watch it IRL.

When I have a nap during the day and sleep paralysis I often dream that I can hear someone, and I'm trying to wake up and trying to call to them to come and wake me up but I can't move, and I struggle and struggle until a real noise IRL does snap me out of it. But the noises and people I heard before were so real, I didn't realize I was asleep - just paralysed. And yes, I'm always in the same place as IRL at the time.

Wow. That's bizarre. I mean, how similar we are. Lots of people report demonic or evil presence in the room when they're paralyzed, but I never do. It's always a totally rational, reasonable situation.

I probably told you, but I also once had a dream where I was watching an Edward Gorey animated version of Leroux; it was amazing and I'm still pissed it's not real.

Wow, that does sound incredible! I think quite a few of my favourite ever films are ones I've only watched in dreams, and couldn't begin to describe.

I did have a few months where I had night terrors, where some kind of threatening presence was pulling me around when I had sleep paralysis, but once I worked out to not struggle against it, it wore off. I think that was mostly medication weirdness.

I really like the sleep paralysis explanation for both the incubus/succubus thing and alien abduction--depending on what our cultural mythic terror is, that's the evil presence you feel. There was a case where this woman claimed to have been "drugged" and raped, which set off a whole spate of women claiming similar things. It was like the witch trials, scouring this town for an imaginary serial rapist.

That sounds preety awful.

I never remember my dreams. I have a nightmare that I can remember except since it really happened and all I'm doing is reliving it, I'm not sure exactly how to refer to it. Fortunately, that hasn't happened in a while.

Wow. Never? That's really interesting. It sounds like a terrible nightmare, but it's fascinating that that's what you remember.

Not since I was around 8. I just never remember anything from the sleeping world. Except for that nightmare, but I'm happy that one's gone away for now.

Every now and then, when I'm still dreaming but getting closer to waking up, I'll get a situation where my dream is proceeding as usual, but I'll have the physical sensations of lying down in bed. So in the dream it will seem as though I'm floating around in a horizontal position, several feet above the ground. Sometimes the dream changes to accommodate this - if I'm driving a car, it will somehow be a car that's made to be driven lying down.

That's an interesting variation; sort of like incorporating the alarm into your dream but more physical. It's interesting that your bed kind of disappears.

I've had that before - dreaming that I was asleep, dreaming, waking up, then still being dreaming. I wonder if that happened to Lewis Carroll, when he wrote about the Red King's dream in Alice Through the Looking Glass - that whole sense of "which dreamed it?"

Sorry your nap wasn't a restful one, though. Sleep deprivation sucks.

However, *anything* involving Erik and the Persian is totally FTW!

Sometime I should write up the whole Sueniverse plotline; though I don't know how I'd ever explain it all. Suffice to say: Nadir + Peter O'Toole!Erik = Julian Sands. And rats.

meta dreaming

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