to sleep, perchance to dream.

aY, tHeRe'S tHe RuB. so this play i'm working on has these dream and nightmare sequences. and yesterday's rehearsal was devoted to them. dreams fascinate me. as do nightmares. the things our mind tries to work out while we sleep. the things we avoid during the day that announce themselves to us at night. or those times when you don't dream at all . . . or, if you do, you awake in the morning with no memory of it whatsoever. i went for a rather lengthy period of time having no dreams at all. for nearly a year after a pretty life altering break up i could count on one hand the number of times i woke up in the morning and remembered having dreamed. and most of those were actually something that felt like a night terror, but i am assured by friends that it was probably something more like sleep apnea. each time it felt like i was awake and conscious of a very real outside presence in the room that was exerting weight on my chest, pinning me down and making breathing extremely difficult. at any rate, somewhere along the line my sleep pattern changed again and dreams started slowly coming back to me. though i still feel like i rarely wake up remembering my dreams, i just am somehow cognizant that i am having them. in general lately my mind has been going a mile a minute during the wee hours of the night and morning. often to the point that it wakes me out of sleep, i realize that i have been pondering or analyzing or brainstorming about something and i either get up and follow the train of thought or, foolishly, think that it is so vivid and clear in that moment i will surely remember it in the morning and go back to sleep. and of course i never do.
i have this impression, and perhaps it is totally unjustified, that some people have these wonderful and happy dreams. dreams that are fantastical, enjoyable, lighthearted and end well. i have never been such a dreamer. sure, in my 27 years, i have had some pleasant dreams, i have had mornings that i've woken up and thought wow! that was fun or i wish that had really happened. but, mostly, dreams are strange and full of weird emotions for me. as a child i had a lot of recurring dreams. including one where my parents left my sister and i (we were toddlers at the time, no more than 3 or 4) home alone on a very eerie, gray saturday morning to go get married and it was unclear if they would ever return for us. not only was that dream terrifying, but it also felt like a real memory and i never knew if it was something that had actually happened to us or not. eventually, i became old enough to suspect that it was a dream and articulate it to my mother, who assures me it is absolutely not a memory of a real experience. i also dreamt a great deal about being in danger and preparing for it, like lying as still as possible under covers or under a bed as an intruder broke into the house through a window or door downstairs. some people live out fantasies in their dreams, i, on the other hand, clearly use my dreams to worry.