Dream Diary #130: Time Bomb

(The date of this dream may not be accurate as I retrieved this post as a draft without checking the original date I wrote it)

I am transported back to my retail days of working in a supermarket, when suddenly the store is under attack from a mass shooter.

Terrified, I cower in the corner of one of the aisles and though I am shot at several times, somehow I manage to escape from being gravely injured.

I see the culprit walk back and forth past the end of the aisle many times and when I can't see him I can hear the bullets as they ricochet off the walls of the building.

It seems as though I am there for hours, frozen to the spot in fear, conscious of the fact that many of my colleagues were either dead or had managed to escape, but I had no idea which ones.

Just when things start to go quiet and it seems as though the threat has subsided, another man enters the room. I can see him over my shoulder at the opposite end of the aisle that I had seen the shooter; he is carrying a large sports bag and he sets it down on a table and turns towards me, grinning sinisterly.

My heart sinks when he pulls a bomb out of the bag and I know that I hadn't just survived a mass shooting only to be killed by a suicide bomber!

I stand and just as I am about to run, I hear a noise from behind. It is one of my colleagues who had managed to hide in the next aisle along from me.

The man doesn't do very much to stop us, and I put this down to the fact that the bomb would go off imminently. Everything seems to turn to slow motion as I roughly grab my colleague and pull her along with me.

We run towards a lift and get inside. It seems to take forever to get to the top and I feel wave after wave of anxiety in anticipation for the bomb going off.

When we reached the top, we are in a shopping mall and we run through it screaming at everyone to evacuate as fast as they can. I awake before the bomb has a chance to go off.

Dream Diary #128: Final Destination

I arrived in a picturesque remote town in rural USA. I was trying to get to another state but my plane ticket had only managed to get me as far as this unnamed town. I knew I had to get to the airport and buy another ticket to get to my final destination but I didn't drive and didn't know anyone to give me a lift, so I decided I would have to hitchhike and started to ask strangers for directions. 

The information I got was very confusing and contradictory with one person telling me to go this way and then another telling me to go in the opposite direction. 

Exhausted and weary, I decided to take some time out from my travels and stay in the town I was in for a while, to rest and re-calibrate my plans. 

Luckily, the town had a hotel in it so I asked for a room. The locals seemed intrigued by me and were a bit standoffish at first but soon warmed to me when they saw how in love with the town I was.

The town itself wasn't much to look at from the outside but I quickly fell for the remote location and the vast, wide open fields that sent my amateur photographer senses tingling.

The town also offered a very unique tourist attraction in the form of a partially free range petting zoo in the centre with all manner of animals - some not even native to the USA - on display.

Of course, I was dying to take pictures but every time I pointed my camera, someone would instantly stand in my way. They didn't do it deliberately, but there weren't that many people in the town so it was puzzling how someone always managed to get in the way of my shot. 

I was having such an amazing time that I found myself running through all the scenarios in my head that would allow me stay there permanently.

Dream Diary #127: Character Building

I was on a ship in the middle of a beautiful ocean.

I was working on an actress of a movie; the plot of the movie involved a group of individuals who were hired by a wealthy man to retrieve a ancient ring from an exotic temple as he wanted it to propose to his significant other. 

The movie, which was directed by Keanu Reeves for some reason (?), had all the typical characters you'd expect to see in such a film - there was the handsome main character (the hero), the pretty girl (the hero's love interest), the comic relief, the villain etc. - but I couldn't figure out for the life of me what my role was? It seemed as though if you removed my character from the movie, it would make no difference to the story whatsoever. 

I brought this up and was reassured that although there was a script, depending on how we interpreted our characters and the chemistry between us actors, our roles within the story were fluid and could change at any given moment. 

I suddenly got a flash forward to the end of the movie and the main character was embracing me instead of the actress playing the love interest!

Sure enough, once we started filming our scenes, my character did indeed have more natural chemistry and rapport with the lead actor than the actress hired to play the love interest. 

Filming inside all of the temple's caves and tunnels was so much fun, I completely forgot that we were in a movie. 

The dream then switched a little and I had given my mum and my sister an excerpt of a love scene I had written for them to read. I was apprehensive and nervous at exposing that side of my writing to them but they told me they thought it was really good and that they enjoyed it. 

Feeling proud myself, I took the pages from them and tried to put them in order as they were all jumbled, but couldn't because after several attempts to make sense out of what I'd written I realised it was still in my head and I hadn't written my love scene down yet.

Dream Diary #126: Muddy Waters

I was standing on the edge of a canal and there was barge in the water that I wanted to get to but the only way to get there was to walk across a very shaky, unstable wooden plank. 

At first, it didn't look so bad; after all, if I fell I would just land in the water, right? However, a quick glance in the water showed that the canal was very muddy and oily looking and I didn't fancy falling in, so I ignored my initial desire to board the barge and decided against going on it at all.

I then made my way to the opposite side of the canal, where the water was much cleaner and resembled a typical public swimming pool setting, with dozens of people jumping in and splashing around. It looked like so much fun I decided to join in but before I could everyone decided to get out and go to the muddy side of the canal instead.

I couldn't understand their logic and tried to tell them about the state of the water over there, but no-one would listen.

So I watched as they each made their way over and crossed over the plank to the barge with ease and suddenly I was angry with myself for doubting that I would ever make it across and wished I'd trusted myself to be the trailblazer that I am on the inside, rather than the follower I appeared to be on the outside.

Dream Diary #120: Love and Understanding

After going 'off the grid' for several years, my True Love reappeared back in my life sleeping in a bush close my workplace (in reality there are no bushes close to where I work.) He looked dishevelled and disorientated, as if he had been sleeping for the whole time he'd been 'away' and was only just now waking up, with no idea how he got there.

I didn't care about his appearance as I ran towards him and threw my arms around him, so happy and excited to see him again. I had gotten so used to his lack of presence in my life the past few years that I didn't question him about a reconciliation or whether we would see each other again, and even accompanied him to the airport when the powers that be decided it was best for him to be returned to his home country.

I saw him off and returned to work, still amazed by the miracle of seeing him again after so long, albeit briefly, when I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't see him ever again. 

Various shenanigans took place at work and I had almost forgotten that I'd seen my True Love again, when as I was leaving to go home, I froze with shock when I saw him sitting in the street waiting for me.

His legs were missing from the knee down so he couldn't run away or go anywhere so I approached him and sat down. Suddenly, all of the repressed emotions that I had previously been holding back came rushing to the surface and I started to cry and explain how sorry I was and that I had never meant to hurt him or be apart for this long.

But before I could get my words out he took my hand and began repeating back to me exactly what I was going to say! 

Relief flooded through my me and my tears turned from sadness to joy as I thought, "You get it, you finally understand!" For the first time in so long, he wasn't ignoring or wilfully misunderstanding me and it felt so good!

I lay down next to him in the street, still holding hands.

Dream Diary #118: Riding The Waves

I was strolling along the seafront with a friend that I didn't recognise as anyone I know in real-life, when with an almighty roar and crash, a tidal wave descended down upon us, without warning.

Miraculously, we somehow survived, but knew we were on borrowed time as the tide started to retreat out to sea again and we knew another wave was on it's way. We didn't know if we could survive a second time around.

Of course, the logical thing to do was to find our way to higher ground, so we found a nearby hill to climb up, that frankly would've done absolutely nothing to protect us if it were a real-life tsunami situation. 

Thankfully, as it was a dream, we could sit from our spot and observe the natural phenomenon in safety.

To my surprise, The Obnoxious Girl showed up; and although I was surprised, I was sort of expecting her as well, as though my unnamed friend had been discussing her coming along with us, prior to the tidal wave.

Normally the presence of The Obnoxious Girl annoyed me, but due to the common 'enemy' of the tidal wave and our shared amazement at the phenomenon, we actually started to get along and she joined us on the little hillside as we watched another wave form in the distance.

Dream Diary #117: The Ick Factor

I found myself in the company of my former landlord and a few others. This was a surprise since, although my landlord never did anything especially horrible to me, he often made me feel very uncomfortable and this, among other things, was a contributing factor that made me want to leave the property and I had no intention of ever seeing, let alone hanging out with him.

 As it turned out that he had developed a crush on the tenant that moved in after me, and as a fellow female he appealed to me set him up with her. 

I had reservations about doing so, not least because my former landlord was a gluttonous old man in his sixties with a weight problem and a plethora of obesity related health conditions.

Disturbingly, I learned that he had his eye on me, had I not moved out when I did. Apparently just the fact that I was female within a close proximity was more than enough to consider me. 

I caught a glimpse of the woman who had moved in and she seemed really nice and sweet; like someone who would perhaps be too polite to say 'no' if asked out, or set up on, a date.

I felt really guilty even attempting to set her up with someone I personally found so repulsive but then another part of me thought: who am I to judge? What if they really hit it off? Am I just being shallow?

But still, my own personal experiences and judgements got in the way and I found myself warning, rather than appealing to her.

Dream Diary #116: Zombie Apocalypse Now

A zombie apocalypse was sweeping across the nation. The epidemic was spreading so fast and was so imminent that the powers that be weren't even attempting evacuation or rescue procedures; they were merely recommending that people prepare for their inevitable deaths in whatever way they saw fit.

Utterly terrified, I separated myself from my family, barricading myself inside the bathroom absolutely determined that I would survive or at least be in control of how I died. I thought that by entrapping in the bathroom it would bide me some time to think of an escape or survival plan. 

However, everything started to go wrong; from the door coming off the hinges to people poking their heads through the window to chat to me about the current turn of events.

When the husband of the woman I was talking to came to whisk her away to safety I felt a pang of sadness that I didn't have anyone physically present in my life to care about me, the way he cared for her. 

I somehow managed, in the midst of all the chaos, to take a bath; reasoning that if I was going to die, I wanted to feel clean and good about myself.

As the noise and mayhem began to gain momentum and get louder and closer, I tensed up as I prepared myself for the inevitable.

Then, everything went silent.

I looked up and everything was dark.

A mysterious, faceless figure began speaking to me. It explained that it was going to let me in on a secret; the zombie apocalypse had never actually been a zombie apocalypse at all!

Instead, it was a dark, supernatural force, not unlike the 'Slenderman' urban legend that was engulfing the nation and wiping out humanity. 

My blood went cold as I found myself standing on an upper level floor watching as a dark, shadowy figure floated underneath me. I had been given a chance to survive but I knew I had to hide before the shadow found me. 

Dream Diary #115: Critical Thinking

I was in an art class, but not a class that a person would take in adulthood; it was like being in a school classroom, or more specifically, like being at primary or nursery school but I still had the mind of an adult.

I didn't enjoy school whilst I was there, but I was happy that I was in an art class because it was a subject I always tended to be good at and because I still had my adult mind, I knew that I could draw like my adult self, too.

My drawings aren't amazing on a technical level by any means, but I knew that my style would look impressive coming from a child of primary/nursery school age. 

The exercise we were given was a test but I didn't feel the usual test anxiety I normally get when I know I'm being judged and assessed, because it was a subject I was passionate about.

I drew a black unicorn with wings flying through space with a neon rainbow in the background. Within the dream, I got so far and sensed I should stop while the drawing still looked good (something I do in real-life as well), but I got carried away and coloured the background in black too, which had the effect of lessening the impact of the unicorn in the foreground.

The end result wasn't terrible but I couldn't help but wish I'd coloured the background in a different colour.

However, when it came to showing our work, the teachers and other classmates were really impressed and crowded round my drawing, praising it.

Meanwhile, while I didn't think my drawing was awful, I was all too aware of my work's imperfections and couldn't stop myself from picking it apart.

I Eat Happy Meals... Ironically.

Artwork by Matthew Johnstone

When I discovered that Winston Churchill referred to his depression as 'the black dog', I initially found it puzzling. Personally, when I think of a black dog the first image that comes to mind is that of a cute and faithful labrador, a cuddly, loyal companion.

Whilst I admit that depression is nothing if not a loyal beast, what I felt was more akin to being trapped in a steel cage with a rabid, hungry rottweiler. 

Loyal, yes. Cute and cuddly it is not. 

I used to think of my depression as more of a black cloud, though this could be in part due to the fact that one of the main triggers for me is the weather. Rain, I can handle. Thunderstorms, I love. But give me a grey, gloomy day with no discernable purpose other than to block out the sun and blue sky and I am inconsolable. Give me days, weeks even months of this and it's like I lose the will to live. 

That is not to say I don't get down in warmer weather; this is just the one that seems to affect me the most. 

If you choose to be open about your depression, and it isn't always easy to do so, you can always tell when you speak to someone who has not experienced it. 

Some of the most common things that people tell you, "you just need to cheer up" or "snap out of it". Also, "Do more exercise", "stop being so dramatic" and "there are people in this world so much worse off than you."

At it's worst, depression can be just as debilitating and crippling as any physical illness yet no-one would ever dream of  telling someone suffering from physical pain to "cheer up" and pretend it's not there. 

At the risk of sounding 'dramatic' I would even go so far as to describe depression as a cancer or disease of the human spirit, capable of robbing you of everything from your self-esteem, to your will to get up and get dressed in the morning. And unlike many physical diseases there is no one single 'miracle cure,' and everyone who suffers from depression will deal with it differently. 

I could go into the science of depression, chemical imbalances of the brain and whether or not there is a 'depression gene', but I'm not a scientist. I am a writer; I am here for the prose and breaking my feelings down into manageable, happy meal style portions!

Ever since I can remember, I have found it helpful to write my problems down on paper. Three, two, even one week ago I didn't have the will to even do that, so I feel as though I accomplished something just in having written this down today. 

Because I want to end this piece on a high note, I thought I would share one of my favourite things that I discovered whilst researching 'the black dog'; the book I Had a Black Dog by Matthew Johnstone whose illustrations put a genuine smile on my face at a time when I needed it most.

(Originally written in 2013)