Sometimes the scariest dreams that one has are the ones where one is drifting in and out of sleep in the early morning as the alarm clock blasts me out of my slumber periodically. The way I have things set, I have two alarm clocks. First, I have a conventional alarm clock next to the bed. Then across the room, I have an old cell phone with an alarm that’s set for a little while later that goes off for about a minute or so every five minutes that I have to actually get up to reset. Its repeated blasts are great for getting me up in the mornings.
So this morning, the cell phone alarm is doing its thing, and I’m drifting in and out of sleep. Between two of the alarms, I had a very short but terrifying dream. Ever heard of anesthesia awareness? This dream centered on that.
In this dream, I’m about to undergo a surgical procedure of some sort. Doesn’t matter what the procedure was, because it wasn’t made explicit in the dream. But it was enough to require general anesthesia. So in this dream, I’m there, and they administer the anesthesia. Everything goes black, and I am completely paralyzed, i.e. I can’t move anything or open my eyes. But my mind was still fully alert, and they were about to operate on me! I was terrified. I tried to shout, “I’M STILL HERE!” in an attempt to get the doctors’ attention, but because I was completely paralyzed by the anesthesia, I couldn’t do anything. I was helpless. I didn’t know what to do, because I couldn’t do anything. After what felt like a few minutes of that horrible feeling, knowing that extended, excruciating pain was imminent, I felt myself become able to move again… and woke up.
That dream really scared me. I really started to wonder if I was going to die. I was completely helpless in this dream, and in an amazingly stressful situation. I don’t know what prompted my mind to construct that situation, but I didn’t like it one bit. I’d take a week of those awkward naked-in-public-for-no-reason dreams over that short, scary dream any time. This dream really had me thinking all day. Half of me was really distressed by the dream, and the other half was trying to convince the first half that it was only a dream.
Anyone want to take a stab at what this one means? I’m a bit at a loss, and it was quite disturbing…