Tarantula Dreams

Do you ever have stress dreams? I do. When I get in a pattern of not getting enough sleep and feeling like I have too much on my plate, sleeping can be quite an adventure for me.

I think it was one night about a week ago when I found myself with an especially active dream life. First there was a dream where I was in a roomful of people. I could tell that another person in the room was about to do something inappropriate and then pass it off as an accident. It was stressing me out. So I determined if he did what I thought he was going to do I would not let it remain a secret but I would call him out by shouting "Hey!" loudly enough for other people to hear thus calling attention to him. Of course he did the thing I was afraid of and I shouted "Hey!" .... And I woke up both myself and Walter. That was at about 3:00 a.m.

I stayed awake for about an hour and then finally fell back to sleep. After a while I had a very long, involved dream. It was like a mystery movie with a complicated plot and there were all kinds of unusual things happening in it. But as dreams go, the settings changed on a whim. At the end of the dream I found myself in my own bedroom. We were just getting up for the day and Walter went into the bathroom. In my dream I woke and sat up. I looked at the comforter and saw something furry and almost boomerang shaped appearing to stand on the comforter. I decided it looked like the leg of large tarantula. Then there were more of them. I didn't see the body, but just several legs.

I wanted to double check what I was seeing so I gave the comforter a shake to see what would happen. Oddly, the tarantula legs disappeared below the comforter as though the comforter passed through them. When the comforter fell back to rest the tarantula legs multiplied quickly covering the bed! Of course I got out of bed right away.

I looked at the walls and the curtains and things started to come to life there too. Suddenly the entire room was alive and the air was filled with creatures like bats. I became hysterical and ran out into the hallway. It was a bit terrifying. But a part of me was composed enough to realize that what I was seeing with my own eyes could not possibly be happening. From the hall right outside the bathroom door (which was open) I cried to Walter "something is wrong, I'm hallucinating!!" His reaction was very calm. And when I looked back into the bedroom the creatures were receding into the walls and the bed from where they came. That's when I woke up for real.

That last dream was so vivid and colorful and real. Yet a bit less scary because I knew in my mind that I was "hallucinating" and those things were not really happening. When I replayed the dream in my head so I could tell it to Walter I wondered if what I saw in that dream might be the kind of thing one sees when having an acid trip. (No I don't do drugs.) Thankfully the scary scene was very short.

I need to get more sleep! :)