Dreamy Nights

For most of my life, I haven’t remembered much about my nightly wanderings through my subconscious—and that’s probably a good thing. So, I was surprised when, over the past couple of months, I vividly recalled two different dreams after waking up in the morning. I do have dreams, but most of the time, they are not very memorable—just mundane fragments of incomplete ideas, quickly fading as I wake. But these two dreams were different. They lingered. The first was a doozy—and not in a good way. It was terrifying. The first thing I remember about that dream wasn’t a person, place, or event, but an overwhelming feeling of fear. At first, I had no idea why. It was just there, pressing down on me. Then, as the dream sharpened into focus, I realized I was being chased. By what or whom, I wasn’t sure. Events were disjointed. People and scenes jumped ahead in jerks. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone—there were others with me. We were seeking refuge inside a worn-out old building with large windows and a door in front of us. We crouched, trying to stay out of sight of whatever was coming. The scene kept shifting, fading in and out of focus—at least as much as any dream can. I needed to protect those I was with, though their faces were indistinct, blurred by the haze of the dream. A group of figures—people, or maybe something else—approached, their presence looming closer. My hands trembled as I realized I held a gun—smaller than theirs, but it was something. The people behind me, maybe family, maybe strangers, depended on me. I begged them to be quiet and get out of sight, though I felt trapped where we were. The only light came from outside. My breath caught as the silhouettes of four men with big guns passed by the window openings and began to enter the room. I fired. There was confusion, chaos. I felt overwhelmed. And then—just like that—I woke up. I bolted upright, and I think I might have even yelled. I threw off the covers, my chest tight with panic. What was that? Who were they? Who was I protecting? What was going on in my head? I’ve never been in combat. I’ve never been chased by anyone with a gun. No one has broken into my house. For thirty years, I carried a gun, but I don’t think I ever felt anything like that during my law enforcement career. The emotions—so raw, so vivid—felt real, yet they weren’t mine. Where did they come from? Why did my mind create a reality so detached from my own? Lately, the world itself feels unreal. The news is chaotic, life unpredictable. What’s the next surprise? Chaos seems to be the new normal. Maybe some of that chaos has crept into my head. Or maybe it’s something else. That first dream came in January—not long after the new president pardoned the January 6 prisoners. That felt personal to me, like a betrayal to all law enforcement. Perhaps thinking about that day triggered emotions I wasn’t even aware of. Anger I had packed away—out of sight, out of mind, as they say. I’ve read many of the stories of those officers who protected our Capitol that day. Those are stories we should all consider. Of course, maybe it was just a random bad dream. Does anyone really understand what goes on inside their own head? The second memorable dream was equally unsettling, but in an entirely different way. It was much foggier—no real story, just a feeling, drifting along with a deep loneliness. I was crying. Real crying. Tears on my face. And I was thinking about my mother, who has been gone twenty years. The sobs were loud enough to wake my wife, who then woke me up, asking what was wrong. “Are you all right?” How long does grief last? I don’t think it ever really ends. It changes. On the surface, it feels like it’s fading, but maybe it’s one of those emotions we can never truly pack away. We always know it’s there, even if we can’t see it. I’m not even sure my mother’s loss was the reason I felt so unsettled that night. Was I the active presence in that dream—crying in grief—or was she the one reaching out, comforting me for something else? Freud and Jung both attributed purpose and meaning to dreams. Carl Jung studied and wrote extensively about dreams throughout his career. One of his ideas is that some events—things we don’t consciously register at the time—still linger just below the level of awareness. They reside beneath our conscious knowledge, absorbed subliminally without our realizing it. Later, they may resurface as a kind of afterthought, appearing in our dreams. His description of dreams as flimsy, evasive, unreliable, vague, and uncertain feels exactly like what I tried to describe here. Reading Jung’s work makes me want to think about these dreams more—if it is even possible to study something that feels both vaporous and evanescent. Thoughts and feelings we believed we had packed safely out of sight. Thoughts and feelings that perhaps should never have been packed away in the first place. Because when we try to hide them, they return. And they haunt our nights.