The nightmares are starting to break through the Overherd barriers sooner than expected.
But perhaps I should have been expecting this. In a way, I’m approaching the last leg of the dungeon. It’s been bad, and while I’ve gotten a bit of breathing room, I suspect it’s just going to get worse, beyond my own meager expectations.
I did lose hold of the Overcow in the night, which of course leads down the path of nightmares any time, but even after I got her back in my arms, the nightmare persisted.
Well, at least I woke up before my father exploded. The dream is probably best described as an Elseworlds tale, or an AU story, where I graduated and went back home to live with my parents.
We were living in a much nicer place, thanks to my income, almost decadent. But my father’s patterns of abuse remained, as they always have… It was an appeasement stage, where I did everything possible to keep the volcano from exploding, even though I knew it was inevitable. Things hadn’t yet reached the point where I would have to beat my own head against the wall to stop my father hurting either me or my mother (who I still protected with my life, even if the favor wasn’t returned by her), but the situation was getting there….
The cruelest touch is that I was trying to support my tea habit, even though I knew having hobbies that weren’t directly pertinent to my job upset my father, and he had just found out.
Then I woke up.
And hugged the Overcow very hard. I did go back to sleep, where the story picked up where it left off: a powderkeg situation, and I had foolishly just lit a match. My father’s anger can burn slowly, but the results are always the same: in a few hours, he would explode.
With my mother no longer working, and too tired to leave the house for long, I had no choice except to stay, if I wanted to protect her.
So I did. Even knowing what was coming.
Then I woke up with the alarm.
I’m sure someone will take me to task for not being strong enough to make different choices in my dream—or even just for not realizing it was a dream, and definitely for not remembering my current life.
My bartender would tell those people to go fuck themselves. Well. Not in those terms. He says that it’s extremely rare to be able to have lucid dreams, and told me not to fret about it. Good thing, because I’ve been trying to lucid dream ever since the Years of Zorn and Tharn started, past their end, and all this time without success.
I just don’t remember this life in those dreams. Oh, maybe small details are incorporated, like the tea habit, which just makes it worse.
My nightmares… there but for the fickleness of the gods go I.
Spontaneous ∂erivation 
I’ve been trying all my life and I’ve never had a lucid dream. My father has them all the time and chides me for not being able to do it. But I just can’t.
Which is weird because I’m such a control freak over myself every second I’m awake. Or, maybe that’s why I can’t control my dreams because I try to control every little thing I think and feel during the day. Maybe the subconscious is all like “Yo, conscious mind, sit down and shut up! We got this!” if you’re a control freak during the day.
So if you spend a lot of time trying to control what you think and feel during the day, that could be why you have trouble doing the same in your dreams? Just a thought.
You know, I worked hard to learn to make choices in my nightmares, to control them to go somewhere new. And my nightmares shifted to integrate this – I would dream I had control of the dream and then realise (with shock and horror) that I didn’t. I would wake with pounding fear: if I wasn’t in control then who was?
I don’t try to force myself to make choices in my dreams anymore. I am sure it works for some people but all it did for me was change the tone of my nightmares.
Well, as you know, I am unsparing about my language in these contexts, and I’m happy to tell anyone that thinks you should be able to control your dreams with enough personal will to go fuck themselves.
At least you got forty days out of it.
ShadowDog,
I don’t try to control what I think/feel during the day because I know it’s not all that possible. It washes over me, for better or for worse.
Sylvia,
My nightmares and PTSD are definitely canny enough to do the same kind of integration. They do it for everything else….
Abi,
:) I think that it goes back to the “bad things can’t happen to good people, or else they might happen to me” ideal that a lot of people have…
Wogglebug,
I’m not counting the Overherd out. I think they do leaven out my dreams, even now; for instance, I didn’t dream the kind of dream where my father locks me in a barrel full of mud and slowly cleaved the top of my head with an axe.
*hugs Ike*
Also, one must consider that the Overherd has been working doubletime to munch down nightmares over the holiday. Perhaps they simply need a bit to rest and recharge (and digest) those thorny devils.
Someone doesn’t think you dream right? Um… yeah, they need to go fuck themselves.
Sorry you had a bad nightmare, that sucks.
Cori R.,
^.^
Hazeldazel,
Thanks. :) It’s normal for me to have bad dreams; and while this is a nightmare, it’s nowhere near my worst nightmares.
In another life, this was simply how things were.
My nightmares are not controllable. The only dreams I’ve had any tiny effect in are those that loop through boring or remote-feeling sequences.
My faith in the Overherd remains. They may not be magic, but they are Good.
pericat,
My faith in the Overherd remains. They may not be magic, but they are Good.
Yes, this. ^.^ Having the Overcow to hug in the morning was the difference between being able to get out of bed (eventually) versus shaking in bed for an hour. I think if Ike wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have gone into work, either; but Ike is Working Cow, so if I want to hug him, I have to take him to work.
I’m not saying the days won’t get darker, but the cows do help a lot.