Persistant dream world
When I was younger, all of my dreams took place in the same universe. Whenever I entered it, I suddenly became aware of every part of that universe, even the areas I couldn’t access in the current dream. I also had a visceral memory of most of the other dreams that had happened there… not like a memory replaying in my mind, but more like a bodily memory — a feeling that these stories had actually been lived there.
Most areas of the dream world create a feeling of anxiety in me. The story usually begins normally, then the situation gradually deteriorates. Either I have to run away, or I’m trying to reach a goal I can’t reach, or I’m late somewhere, I have to leave a place before getting trapped there, I need to find my friends, I’m doing something dangerous… basically, there is always something creating anxiety.
But it isn’t entirely unpleasant, because I always have a semi-awareness that I’m inside a dream.
As I got older, I returned to this universe from time to time. Then eventually almost never, or only very rarely. When I started taking sertraline, all my dreams suddenly began taking place there again. After stopping the medication, I lost access to that space once more.
I recently restarted sertraline less than a week ago. From day one, my dreams immediately began unfolding in that universe again, without exception.
It feels comforting to reconnect with this world that has belonged to me since childhood, but at the same time, there is still this dull nighttime anxiety present. However, unlike before sertraline, I no longer wake up anxious every morning. It almost feels as though I release the anxiety during the night. It’s a strange sensation.
I don’t know if that’s truly what’s happening, but it’s the only interpretation that currently makes sense to me.
It would be difficult to describe the universe itself because it is so rich and detailed. Every area exists as its own complete place. And at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll say it again: when I’m inside the dream, I’m aware of the existence of the entire universe and of the previous dreams that happened there, as if it were a life of its own.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the areas (without too much detail):
- My childhood street (a cul-de-sac) surrounded by forest. At the end of the cul-de-sac is a cave. Inside the cave is a lake where I often dream that my sister drowns or gets attacked by a crocodile. At the bottom of the lake there is a tunnel you have to pass through underwater, which leads out into an amusement park.
- The amusement park with enormous rides and water slides.
- The forest is divided into distant sections: a huge mountain I sometimes have to climb (either without my parents’ permission or with them), a large clearing with clotheslines and white sheets hanging to dry… and just behind it, a campground. Elsewhere there are tiny houses built directly into the earth that I explore while knowing I shouldn’t be there. In another area, suspended wooden bridges where boys on bicycles chase me.
- My neighbors’ houses (especially the neighbor on my right and the woman across the street), which often represent my own house.
- A Halloween neighborhood with increasingly frightening decorations. Sometimes it’s fun, other times I lose my family and have to find them again.
- A junkyard seen from above where I walk around with a flashlight.
- A massive animal shelter where I go to adopt animals.
- A labyrinthine shopping mall where I get lost (although the more I dream about it, the easier it becomes to navigate, because the stores are always in the same places — the food court, the mattress store so overcrowded you have to squeeze your way through it…).
- In the basement of the shopping mall, there is a tunnel and a subway that leads into the city.
- In the city, there are overcrowded apartments (sometimes I move there and realize I have to live with a family of ten without my consent).
- In that same city, I often dream that I’m using drugs again (I’ve been sober for 10 years) and end up somewhere resembling Mount Royal. There’s music, people using substances, and I often run into old teenage friends or former acquaintances who bring me back to their homes.
- A few times, I dreamed I had been at a bar there and later ended up in an extremely hardcore swingers club while completely high, with the overwhelming feeling that I was doing something “wrong.”
- A road leaving my house that climbs toward another city filled with skyscrapers. When I was a child, I often dreamed that I was driving and panicking because I didn’t know how to drive. I then had to find my workplace or an appointment somewhere among the skyscrapers.
- A hotel in the south — always the same one, identical every time — where I go on vacation. I repeat the same activities there. Occasionally I’m disappointed because the weather is bad, but most of the time we swim, go boating, and so on.
- A terrifying spa lost deep in the forest that I visit at night. There’s nobody there, it’s run-down, and it feels haunted and bleak.
- A long car ride that takes us far away. Along the way there’s always the same restaurant where we stop to eat. Afterward we climb a steep hill. There are lights everywhere, and we enter a city far from home. We end up at something like a marina and go boating on a river. Sometimes the water is calm, sometimes rough — it depends on the dream.
- A zoo where you must cross obstacles to observe the animals (including a swamp, among other things that are hard to describe). At the end of the zoo visit there’s a fairground with rides, but the rides are frightening. Very Halloween-like atmosphere.
There are other places and many more details (I remember fragments of what can happen in most locations, but it’s difficult to explain and would take too long).
Are there other people able to describe their dreamworld ?