Time warped dreams....

Have you ever had a dream that seemed to last for several hours, only to wake up and realizing that you've been asleep for an hour or so?

I have, and it's quite disorienting to the say the least.

And the subject is quite weird, something that I never really consciously thought of for the past several years.

Sometime ago I wrote a post about this girl that I once knew about six years ago.

I dreamed that I recently bumped into her and we had a very long chat about anything and everything that took place after we parted ways. In my dream I was surprised since the meeting was only by chance, and strangely enough, other people in my life, such as past and present officemates, classmates, etc. were present in the dream, as if slices of my life from various times were all lumped into one episode.

Kinda like the last scene from the movie Titanic except of course, none of us were dead, there was no ship or iceberg involved, there was no applause, and no kiss at the end of the scene. But other than those differences, everything was exactly alike, if you know what I mean. Sort of.

I distinctly remember choosing my words carefully, purposefully, since the circumstances when we parted were somewhat less than ideal, though we parted as friends. There wasn't really many heartfelt wounds in that context, though some memories were, frankly, better off forgotten.

And in my dream, people I know, some from the time itself, some before, and some after, were asking me how our talk went.

I don't exactly remember what I said though, or if I even said anything. What I did remember was the conscious effort to think of the right things to say.

The setting was some resort or rest house somewhere. It looked vaguely familiar, possibly a memory of some place I've been before but forgot with the passage of time.

Then somewhere along the dream, I woke up. Given the perceived flow of time within the dream, I thought it was already morning, and that I had to get up and get ready for work.

I fumbled at my bedside clock, pushed the backlight button and the digits revealed the time. It was 1:48 AM. I was asleep for less than two hours.

Strange. My dream seemed to last more than half a day. In reality it was only a couple of hours.

Even stranger still is the inescapable conclusion the somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind I was still looking forward to talking with that girl someday, for what reason, I don't even know. Like something was still left unsaid. But to be honest, I have no idea what that thing is. Maybe that's the reason why in my dream I spent so much time thinking of the right thing to say, and I don't even think in my dream I got to say anything at all.

Hmmm...I wonder.

Dreams are fascinating in the sense that they sometimes reflect what we are thinking and feeling on the inside, even if it isn't manifest in our conscious thought. Of course, for the life of me, I can't really figure out why I would dream of an ex-girlfriend six years down the line, even when to my mind, everything has been said and done.

Maybe it was just a one off.

Or maybe I should just quit drinking Mountain Dew and iced coffee before going to bed.

Yeah. That must be it. A caffeine buzz while sleeping. Well, why not? :-)