To sleep: perchance to dream...

Ay, there's the rub.

We studied Carl Jung last night in my Theories and Method's seminar. Interesting stuff really...the archetypes, collective unconscious and the idea that we create the Deity archetype and religion as a way to keep us from actually having religious experiences... Anyway.

Maybe it was Jung, maybe it was that yummy brown sugar cinnamon tortilla thing I made right before bed, but I had crazy dreams last night.

The craziest of them all was the one that I had to wake myself up from, because I didn't feel like dying in my dream.

I dreamed I had traveled to L.A. to try and get back together with my ex who lives out there. I spent the first half of the dream flirting with him and things seemed to be going along well, until his female roommates got home. (Ryan you're going to love this) Turns out he was in a relationship with his three female roommates, and they hated me. I started screaming and crying as the girls knocked me around and threw my stuff out of the apartment. I yelled to Ryan that I was leaving L.A. on the next flight out and never coming back, but he calmly reminded me we had tickets to a dinner theater, and I should stick around.

At the theater I started getting that creepy "you shouldn't be here" intuition feeling. And sure enough, not 5 minutes into the meal...here come the mutants. Everyone panics and starts running for the doors (which of course are locked) as these crazy lizard things start slaughtering people left and right. I was running along the balcony of the theater, avoiding the mutants when I noticed there were people with video cameras.

As it turns out, they were filming a horror movie but it was real life horror, and people were really dying. I thought to myself "I've got to get out of here, this is just not right!" as the back of the theater burst into flames. Out of the flames flew this skeleton creature with a pumpkin on his head, on fire himself and laughing maniacally.

That's when I realized- "I'm dreaming, and there is no way in hell I'm letting Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas be the reason I die."
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Ugh. A night full of dreams always leaves me more exhausted than when I laid down.
Maybe I'll interpret this later...

Enter Sandman

My subconscious has been doing a number on me lately.

3 of the past 4 nights I've had nightmares, or at the least very suspenseful dreams.

Last night I watched one of my ex-boyfriends get eaten by a hoard of zombies. Ironically, it was the ex who has his own reoccurring nightmares about zombies. I woke up in a bit of a panic, managed to laugh at myself a little and then fell back to sleep trying my darnedest to think about cute puppies or rainbows or anything peaceful and pleasant.

Instead, I dreamed I was in a department store full of people milling around. Suddenly, all the TVs and speakers in the store started announcing this competition that would be happening in just a few minutes, some sort of scavenger hunt. The winner would get a million dollars. The person I was apparently with in my dream leaned in close and whispered "I love you, but I have to win this". I've never heard this person say that before so it caught me off guard, but before I could react he was gone.

Looking around me, I instinctively knew something was wrong. Instead of joining in the competition I calmly climbed out a nearby open window, scaled down a few stories and safely jumped to the ground. Suddenly my "point of view dream camera" swung outside of myself and I was looking at myself walking away from the store. It became one of those slow motion movie moments set to music- the heroine of the story casually sauntering towards the camera as the whole building blows up in the background. Stunning really. I wish I'd had a way to record it.

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Maybe we shouldn't read too much into dreams. Maybe they really are just the left-overs from the day rolling around and working themselves out, but I kept coming back to the way the relationship between me and the (ex/unexpected) love interest played out in the dreams. I'll spare you the gory details of my internal analysis, but eight hours of plowing through boxes at Pier 1 left me with an interesting question.

Would you rather have a good relationship with an indefinite time-line and no real knowledge of what could end it?
Or a good relationship with a definite end and clearly defined, openly admitted excuses to break it off? Perhaps knowing the details would allow you to relax and actually enjoy the other person?

I'm not asking which is better, because I don't think one is over the other and both have their perks... but what would YOU rather have?

Don't need nothin' but a good time...

It's official, I need to stop eating before I go to bed. I'm going to blame this dream on the nectarine/strawberry juice and the pizza. Oh and my unfortunate love of crappy reality "dating" shows...

I dreamed last night that I was a contestant on "Rock of Love", you know- that VH1 reality show with Bret Michaels from Poison as the "eligible bachelor". I apparently had been playing the game pretty well, as the other girls in the house seemed to hate me for winning a fair amount of the "challenges" and "dates" with Bret. I spent the first part of the dream scheming with a few of the other contestants about to get the girls we didn't want in the house anymore eliminated.

Everything seemed to be going well, until we reached the nightly "elimination". You can imagine my shock when Bret told me my "tour ends here". Apparently I'm a pretty sore loser in my dreams as I pulled Bret aside and in some sort of brilliantly scripted monologue (that I wish I could remember!) convinced him that I'm the one. I think I even agreed to get breast implants if he'd keep me around.

The dream continued on for a little while longer until I got kidnapped by a producer who looked like Lyle Lovett and I thought- "Wait...Lyle Lovett? I must be dreaming!" and woke up.

So what is my subconscious trying to tell me?
I can persevere and compromise to get what I want?
Even the seemingly unattainable is within my reach?

Or am I just an attention whore? ;-)