Dreams... and the day that follows.

Today is the second day that I’ve been left “in a funk” as a result of the dream from which I awoke.  Yesterday’s left me shaking from the adrenaline that was coursing through my body as a result of the argument in my dream.  Today’s left me nearly emptying a tissue box from the strong feeling of loss that I had as a result of this morning’s dream.

This doesn’t normally happen to me.  It’s rare that I remember a dream, so to have it happen two nights in a row is very weird.  And to have the dreams be so completely different doesn’t help either.

Yesterday’s dream:

Argument with an older family member over a small item owned by my grandfather that led to me storming out and walking home.

Today’s dream:

Finding the perfect girl, only to learn that she’d been dead for 100 years and to have that knowledge hit me as if she’d just died.

OK.  So, both do deal with death of a loved one — my grandfather has been dead for a couple decades.  But other than that, there’s nothing else that I can see that’s a similarity.  Yesterday’s was new.  Today’s was a “repeat”, meaning I’ve had a very similar one before, only this time it was longer and more in-depth.

What all this has led me to, other than writing this post, was to wonder if our dreams — even those we don’t remember — always affect our moods during the day that follows the dream.

You know the expression “woke up on the wrong side of the bed”?  Well, what if the reason the person is in a bad mood is because of a bad dream that they simply don’t remember?

Dreams have always fascinated me, yet I find myself hesitating — nay, avoiding — running off to a dream dictionary web site (such as the one on dreammoods.com, which I’ve used a few times).  Why?  Frankly, I’m scared of what it might indicate.  But, I’m also sure that such a site isn’t really going to give me the definitive answer I’d like.

I know from past visits to such sites that they are better suited for short, concise, abstract dreams where you dream of a particular object or color.  They’re not really all that good at defining longer story-like dreams, which are often the type that I do actually remember.  Really, if I was a better writer, a movie could be extracted from today’s dream.  There was about as much substance in it as most movies these days.

For instance, in today’s, there are these concepts or objects: bed, dresser, note, love, kiss, hug, photo, frame, bed and breakfast, cemetery, bench, tombstone, walking, road, tree, rain, pneumonia, death, ghost, shoulder, eyes, blue, freckles, red, brown, fireplace, mantle, a word I rarely use or hear: “bequeath”, lawyer, hook and eye latch, door, footsteps, sleep, comfort, pain, searching, and a few others I’m sure.  So… how do ya deal with looking up that?    Exactly.  It’s nearly impossible to make sense of it from individual “definitions” of those terms.

Regardless of why I had these dreams, I’d like to leave you with this suggestion:  The next time you wake up with emotions that seem to have come from nowhere (e.g., grumpy, sad, lonely), try and tell yourself that it was just a bad dream and see if that helps you move past those emotions and get on with the rest of the day.