By Ed "Digger" Dement
Dream:
I am in a bed, lying on my stomach. Lying next to me is the man (I’ll refer to him as J) that I am actually sleeping in the bed with in the non-dream world. In the dream, J is asleep but I am awake. Suddenly another man appears—he is not large, but barrel-chested and stocky. I do not recognize him, and while I am not frightened, I feel a bit nervous. The stocky man gets into the bed next to me, and in a non-sexual way rolls on top of my back. He is heavy and I find it hard to breathe. I try to alert J but I cannot speak. I reach over and feel J’s hand and I start to scrape his finger with my fingernails trying to wake him up. That doesn’t work and now I am getting scared. I realize that I have one breath left before I am suffocated and so with all my energy I try to scream. I managed to scream (J told me it was more like whimpering) and as I did so I woke up. End of dream. —Troubled in Tiverton
Interpretation:
If we see this dream as relating to your temporal state when the dream occurred, then it’s all about you and J, and a warm fuzzy feeling you have in his presence. I will get to that in a minute, but first a word about the result of the dream. It’s not too uncommon to have a dream, moments before waking, where you are in dire peril and desperately trying to escape certain doom. You had “one breath left before (you) suffocated.” And you did exactly what you needed to do; jostle yourself just enough to awaken. I’m no physiologist, but what you may have been affecting by the “scream” was the hormonal trigger that ends the condition known as “sleep paralysis,” in which your muscles are completely limp. What followed the scream (er, whimper) was transition to the waking, mobile state. Something of note, too: all mammals, as far as I know, will sigh heavily just before waking. It’s your body’s way of getting a good dose of oxygen to your brain and muscles. The whimper may be an added assurance that you will awaken.
Interesting, too, that you felt it as a scream but J heard it as a whimper. Similar to the very curious visual phenomenon that not all animals comprehend the diminutive illusion of visual perspective (as in, distant objects only appear smaller than objects closer to us but may actually not be). So, too, our auditory perception is often skewed, relative to how we “know” the sound while awake, during that twilight period when we are drifting toward or waking from sleep. In other words, we perceive any sound as louder or weirdly different than we would have, had we heard it while awake. A door closing may sound like a gun shot, or a whimper may seem like a scream. While awake, we reflexively reassure ourselves that “oh, that’s just a door” and mitigate overreacting to the sudden sonic assault of a door closing, etc. But I digress. All that stuff that led up to the dream is just as rich and interesting in meaning.
So, your dream opened mirroring your physical reality. You were lying in bed, with J at your side. It’s important to note that you were awake and J was sleeping in your dream. It all seems so banal (not in a pejorative sense, just as in a common everyday human experience). Then things turn strange, when the other man enters. He is the very classical shadow figure. This is the personified—often faceless, sometimes obscured—presence that elicits an unsettling, vulnerable, even threatening response in us. He is the boogey man, Camus’ Stranger, even Bush’s Bin Laden. He also is an indication of some inhibition, a repressed desire. Worry not, we all have them. We need our inhibitory mechanisms, else we’d be “dancing in the streets” and literally strangling each other over small disagreements. So the stranger, a “not large, but barrel-chested and stocky” man, approaches you and sits beside you. He is trying to tell you something, sort of. He also is a personified desire, maybe even taboo impulse, that you may have a tendency to inhibit from being expressed. We’re a reserved bunch of apes that tend to withhold more than we reveal … most of us anyway.
So about the stranger: When the stranger first shows himself, our attention is usually drawn toward “him” for some inexplicable reason. The stranger is present, but what does he want? “He” often takes his time making his intentions clear. You are still on your stomach, and it appears you are not responding to his presence. He moves past simply sitting next to you, and in a “non-sexual” way rolls on top of you. This initiates a response by you. The stranger’s intentions are to move us from a comfort zone and elicit a response to something either in actuality or within our consciousness that we are not addressing. You hadn’t woken or come to realize who the stranger was, so he got a little closer—and, rather humorously, rolled on top of you. “Oh lordy, he’s so crude in how he communicates,” but often effective. And now you are moved to respond, because you’re suffocating. You don’t fight the stranger, or surrender to his assault, but “scream.” And you then awaken. Obviously J awoke, or was awake, and you two talked about the dream.
The stranger is your creation. And here, he personifies your desire to draw nearer to J. On the surface, this desire simply may be that you just wanted to cuddle with him (J, not the stranger). J is J; the stranger is a part of you. But of course, you could not communicate that to J, because you were asleep. You may not have even been aware of the desire to cuddle before you fell asleep, or you may have turned during sleep, or it may have arisen after falling asleep. However it came about, it eventually became such an overwhelming desire that it was suffocating you until you had to scream. Even though the stranger sat on you in a “non-sexual” way, I would not be surprised had you and J taken the moment further than a cuddle.
From this dream, it’s apparent you feel safe with J and trust him; otherwise, you may not have told him about the dream. We are all vulnerable when expressing to someone else what we desire from them. And it’s natural even in very close relationships to be a bit unsure or apprehensive about asking for what we want. But here your desires were ultimately greater than any apprehensive tendencies you felt. Note, too: the stranger was not all that big, just barrel-chested and stocky. It was a small thing to overcome, and hopefully you gained what you desired. Good luck! And thanks for sharing the dream!
Send your dreams to digger@agendanation.net for analysis.
