The Bus

Ok, so after reading the last dream I wrote about, you're probably thinking, "Dang, that's intense!" And that's really only the beginning. I'm just letting you know that, so you can chose to stop reading now if you want. Also, you may begin to see a pattern, many of my dreams involve children, actually most of the worst ones do. I don't know why. Maybe because I love children more than anything and my favorite thing to do is play with them and make them smile. So unfortunately, they are often the victims in my dreams, and I hate that. Anyway, so prepare yourself because this next dream, it's intense.

This one starts out with me driving, so I must've had it when I was 16. I am driving down a freeway really fast, probably speeding, when all of the sudden I loose control of my car. My car runs straight into another car which slams into a school bus. The bus, because of the angle that it was hit, begins flipping, over and over again, down this hill.  At first, all I saw was the car that I hit and I didn't know about the bus. So I pulled over the the side of the road and got out of my car to try to see if the other people are ok. And that when I see a school bus, a little ways down the hill that is smoking. I walk over to the scene of the wreck, not realizing yet that it was my fault, and as I survey everything, that's when it hits me, I am the one responsible for the bus, too.

As I realize what I've done I hurry down the hill, and to my dismay, I soon realize that the bus was full of small children. At some point, I'm able to make my way to the carnage. I glance up at the bus, and see it mangled on the hill. By the time I make my way down to the wreck, all of the children have gotten out of the bus, and many of their parents are there holding them, while the paramedics try to help as many children as they can. There are bright, flashing lights everywhere from various emergency vehicles.

I begin walking slowly through the wreckage, realizing what I've done. All around me children are completely covered in blood, their little bodies mangled. Parents are holding them, trying to calm the screams of their children or screaming themselves. Suddenly, one child that is close to me looks up at me with his bloody face. He stares at me with his eyes and then looks away. A parent recognizes that I'm the one who did all of this and starts screaming "How could you do this to my baby, my baby!" Many of the parents are in complete anguish as they coddle their dying children, and I stand motionless, knowing that I did this. Eventually I can't stand the scene any longer and I try to find somewhere to hide. I find an obscure corner of some building and begin to throw up. Soon, my mother finds me. As my mom looks at me, I realize that my hands are bloody too. She looks at me and says, "What are you doing in that corner." I looked back at her and said, "I'm hiding, I can't let them know that I was the one who did this." She took my hand and said, "Callan, you have to face them. You can't hide here. You have to tell them." I was terrified, but knew that my mom was not going to let me hide any longer, so I went back out  among the wreckage and began trying to tell everyone that it was my fault, that I did this to their children. I knew that I'd be going to jail because a few of the children had died and a few probably would soon. But I felt like I deserved it because of all of the anguish I had caused.

And then I woke up.
That was one of the first dreams that I was ever completely disgusted by. I woke up feeling unclean and terrified. I couldn't go back to sleep that time.

Trapped

My next dream is fairly short. I think I had this one when I was about 12 years old.

It starts out with me and my family taking a hike up a beautiful mountainside. I was put in charge of watching my little brother, Brennon, who was just a toddler at that point. I was carefully helping him up the big rocks, enjoying this time with my family. Suddenly, things goes darker and it begins to rain. In the confusion of everything, I forget to watch Brennon for a moment. As I realize that he is gone, I tell my parents and siblings that I can't find him, and they are furious at me. We look everywhere, including off the cliff, to see if he's fallen or something until at one point, I hear pounding and a muffled voice coming from below me. As I look down, I see my little brother under about a foot of solid, clear ice. Somehow, on this trail, a deep puddle had formed and filled with water. In the chaos of it all, my little brother had fallen in, and for some reason, the puddle had frozen over.
As I realized that Brennon was trapped, I began pounding on the ice, scratching it with my fingernails, wishing so badly that I could get him out. He looked at me with big, terrified eyes, and kept trying to scratch his way out as well, all the while screaming for me to save him. His screams, muffled by the ice, were matched with my sobs as I tried in vain to save him. Eventually, I saw his eyes draw closed and his arms go limp as he drown underneath the ice. I knew it was my fault because I hadn't watched him. I didn't know how I was going to tell my family. And then I woke up.

Often, I wake up from those type of dreams with a stomach ache and chills. I am usually sweating or crying. But eventually, I realize it was just a dream, and I can get back to sleep.

The first dream I remember

This dream was a reoccurring one, and actually one of my favorites in the end. This is the first truly graphic dream I can remember. I think the first time I had it, I was 8 years old. Then I continued to have it at least once a year for 4 years. Each time I had this dream, something else was added onto the end of it, which eventually made it kind of entertaining. So anyway, I'll just write it.
    This dream starts out in kind of the 1800's. I am wearing an old fashioned dress and so is my mother (who actually didn't look a thing like my real mother). We are cooking in a big cauldron, set over a camp fire and we have a tent set up as well. We are camping in this beautiful, green, grassy area that has a forest next to it, and a steep hill that kind of hides us on the other side of it. We are just sitting there and I'm watching my little sister play. (She's a baby at this point.)
All of the sudden, we hear people shouting in the distance that the Nazis are coming. We hear gun shots and people screaming, and all that happens next happens very quickly. My mother looks at me with intensity in her eyes and tells me to take my little brother (a toddler at this point) into the woods and cover ourselves with the mattress. Somehow, I knew what she meant. I was terrified, but I took his hand and we ran to the woods. We put a mattress over the top of us and had a little hole that we could see out of, to watch the next scene unfold. My mother, trying to protect my little sister (the baby), placed her in a nearby microwave (I know it doesn't make sense, but it's a dream). As the Nazis came over the hill with their guns ready, they butted my mother in the head with their rifle, and kicked over the microwave, not knowing there was a baby inside. I remember watching all of this, but knowing that I had to keep my brother safe. We stayed crouched down, and the Nazis didn't find us.
All of the sudden, the next part of the dream involves us in a boat. My little brother and I are sailing in a boat to this island. I'm not sure how we got there, but we're still fleeing the Nazis. For some reason, they couldn't come in the water. So we get to an island and meet the rest of my family there. My father was there with a couple of my other siblings. I told them what had happened at the camp and they were all upset, but we were in survival mode and didn't have time to mourn. We camped out on this island which seemed to have at least a few thousand people hiding on it. But eventually, we had to flee from there as well because once again, the Nazis came and began an open fire on us all. We fled together, me holding my little brother's hand.

The next part involves us in a warehouse building of some sort. There are a few play sets set up in this warehouse and there are children playing in each of them. Things seem to be happy and content when all of the sudden, someone shouts again that the Nazis are coming. All of the children begin to flee when I get an idea. I yell for them all to stop and to come here. Reluctantly, a few of them listen. I began to frantically give them instructions. I had them rocks and soap and buckets full of something heavy, then station them strategically throughout the play sets. When the Nazis come, they begin slowly looking at every play set, trying to find us. But eventually, one walks straight into the trap I had set and all hell breaks lose. The child with the soap makes a few Nazis fall on the ground and hit their heads. The one with the rocks starts pelting them at anyone he can find. Children start screaming and running around attacking any Nazi they could, and the buckets swing from ropes, hitting them in the head. It was all of the classic things that you see in the movies like Home Alone, where kids have rigged some sort of contraption to beat the bad guys. Then at one point, everyone pauses as the roof to this warehouse opens up an a spaceship-like contraption comes out of the ceiling. It slowly lowers down, as all eyes in the room are fixed on who is inside. He looks familiar, and then it hits me. That's Hitler.
As I realize who it is, I'm instantly overcome with fear and I can see the fear in everyone elses' face too. Then all of the sudden, as Hitler steps out of the spaceship contraption, a movie director comes into the scene and says "Cut, Cut! C'mon you guys, you call that acting?? How am I suppose to make a movie with that? Let's start from the top." And that's the end of the dream.

So yeah, vivid and terrible until that one last scene, and then it's just funny. You're next question will probably be, "Were you learning about WWII or something during all of this." And that would be a good question to get out of the way up front. You'll soon learn that none of my dreams have anything at all to do with what I am going through or memories I've had. Occasionally there are small correlations, but more often than not, my dreams come out of no where, and are based off of nothing that I can tell from my own experiences. Anyway, so that's the end of dream #1.

Dream Journal

Today, I decided that I want to make an archive of my dreams. Those of you who know me, know that my dreams are often times quite unpleasant and terrible to even think about. Usually, when I tell people about my dreams they are shocked, horrified, disgusted, or all of the above. Occasionally, I have good ones, but on a typical night, if I am to dream, it's pretty terrible.

But here's the thing. Because my dreams are so vivid, I feel like they would be great to write about. Maybe it'll be a source of my healing from them. Perhaps, as I continue to write about the dreams I've had and continue to have, they will become more positive and less gruesome, or at least they'll happen less frequently. I figure, even if no one reads this (and I don't blame you if you don't, because it's not fun having those images in my head either) then at least it'll be good for me to get it out there, instead of just inside my head.

I think I'll just start with the dreams I remember and go from there. Some I've already written in my journal, so I can just copy and paste those onto here, others I don't think I've ever really written. So we'll see how it goes.