If I could share my brain with you … you’d save a bundle on movie tickets. My dreams are VIVID. Capital V … I…. V… I… D! They are so real – in technicolour – and seem to run for hours and hours … I can dream two days worth of adventure in just half an hour.
In the early 2000’s there was this great laundry detergent commercial. The final act was a player receiving a perfect pass in front of the goal. The ball meets her foot right at the laces and she slams a great shot right into the back of the net. I loved that commercial … Ede …. not so much. We began to notice that on the nights it played there was a good chance I would re-enact the shot in my sleep. When I say ‘re-enact’. I mean full body motion. I would wake up just as I took that perfect shot and was swinging myself right out of bed – carrying all the blankets – and having given Ede a good kick as I wound up. Yikes! We laughed it off as a ridiculous demonstration of how much I still loved soccer.
After researching to find that soccer commercial I actually woke myself this morning taking a good kick at that ball again!! That made me wake up. It also made me chuckle.
Other ‘active dreams’ started to show up – like the time I dreamed I was in a cartoon like classroom with a famous former student who could fart or poop on demand. His demand … Like now would be a good time to have to go home because I need a change of clothes. This student was well past the age where any such behaviour should have been acceptable – to him. You do not make friends when you are that ten year old. He had begun to perfect his technique to instead release the perfect stink bomb. In my dream classroom I turn into a comic teacher monster and grab him by the mop on his head and prepare to swing him ‘Matilda’ style right out of the room. Again … funny dream … except if you are the person sleeping beside me when I wallop you in the belly and grab the blankets and throw them off into the room with a flourish.
Over time the dreams changed and instead I threw my shoulder out trying to pitch a ball with an arm that was actually under my head and pillow. Or yelled at the top of my lungs when trying to escape danger.
The extreme movements and vivid dreams seemed to calm down for a while. Until these last few years when back they came – only now … full time. I have heard of lucid dreams being defined as a dream in which you seem to have some control. I have had a few of those dreams. But when I say ‘vivid’ here I mean sooooo real that it is difficult to get my head out of the dream – and even when I do wake up it takes me a while to convince myself it wasn’t real.
Two or three times a night I get myself out of bed simply to get out of my head. I have learned that even a short break will allow my dream to simply continue as if it was on pause. My sheets will be soaked, my pillow will be soaked, my hair will be so wet at my neck that it seemed I had just stepped out of the shower. My dreams are mostly scary. They are an exhausting full body workout…
In this last year …. it is getting harder to distinguish whether a dream is actually a memory … or a memory was actually a dream. Especially come morning. I can be up – having a smoothie to start my day – and be reflecting on a memory … and have it slowly dawn on me … no … that was not real.
That is a strange place to sit.
A few days ago I woke up so sad that my aunt had died. She was such a great aunt. Really good with us as kids… My uncle and cousins were a very close extension of our family when I grew up. My cousins are like younger siblings. My uncle like a cool big brother who loves sports and the outdoors. Then I found my brain doing the usual morning correction – no – she didn’t die. That was just a dream… only to then again self correct a few minutes on to realize that – wait – she did die. Years ago … only to feel that grief as if I had just heard the news. For those few minutes I had truly convinced myself she was still here. That was a roller coaster that rocked my morning calm.
On another morning I woke up after a dream in which I had somehow said yes to teaching again. Even though I knew I was retired. I figured it didn’t matter as they wouldn’t have to pay me. But then I would have to find a way to tell them in the end – as I truly did enjoy being retired and would want to stop come June. That morning I was already in the bathroom – feeding the cats and eyeing the clock to see how much time I had to get to school. Only … it dawned on me slowly… it was summertime … and no … I did not have a teaching job again.
In another instance I woke up convinced that we had bought a store. I grew up working in a family grocery business. Somehow Ede and I had figured it was a good move to buy our own store. Now we had to get up – get going – as we had to open the store…
It was not until after I was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s that I learned about ‘Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Disorder'(RBD). It is one of the early indicators used to diagnose Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia. Lewy Bodies (alpha-synuclian proteins) build up in the brain. In the early stages these proteins can damage the nuclei in the brainstem that paralyze your muscles when you are in REM sleep. Not paralyzed you can act out the actions in your dream. More than 75% of people with Lewy Body Dementia experience RBD. This can begin decades before other clinical signs show up to indicate Parkinson’s/Lewy Body Dementia. It is the same process that leads to well-formed visual hallucinations that LBD patients exhibit while awake. I can see how my ‘night cat’ and my ‘nightly dreamscape workouts’ can have occurred at the same time.
It isn’t having these dreams that is the challenge. I think we all have dreams of this sort. It is how long these dreams pervade my thoughts and actions well into my being awake and moving around. I will admit I find that scary.
Most nights. I also have semi-awake dreams. These do not run on narratives – more a visual motor experience of a mish mash of ideas. They usually happen as I am just falling asleep … or as I am waking up. They are uncomfortable because I am ‘with it’ enough to be aware of my thinking … but not in control enough to change the experience . I am trying to project a common sense thought but it comes out as nonsensical.
This morning I was biting sunglasses in half. My jaws were moving with each bite – and I did NOT like the idea of eating sunglasses. I was aware enough to assure myself I was just imagining it – even though I could feel the broken plastic parts in my mouth. Eventually it stopped. But then was followed by equally ridiculous scenarios I cannot recall. I have been noticing this stage in my sleep/wake cycle and with writing this column in mind was trying to recognize when it happened and remember what I was ‘seeing/doing’. Physically I feel like the cartoon character who has had a knock on the head and has little birdies or stars circling her noggin. Eventually the stars clear and reality comes back into focus.
I hope you are beginning to get a feel for the strangeness of these experiences… and understand why any person would be reluctant to admit to them. I find it perplexing that they happen at the same time I am competent enough to write about them – and to be alert to ways to express them. I am also capable of researching what causes them.
It is a tangled web to try to separate what happens in your brain … from what you ARE. Who you are. It seems a paradox. I am working with a brain that sometimes runs amuck – and yet have enough brain to notice it. I am both the strangeness and the reasonable.
I can see how these confused states could expand … and it might become more difficult to switch between my states of mind. I guess it is a blessing that for now I am able to distinguish which is active. I have begun to research how a person progresses from recognizing the strangeness to not seeing it at all. How does a mind that is watching itself lose its way … know when it is about to step onto the road to nowhere?
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