Nightmares, dreams and nighttime fairytales

I’m a weird-dream specialist. Honestly, I have weird dreams about three times a week. Usually it becomes evident right when I wake up that something is just wrong, I can wake up angry, I can wake up in love, I can wake up in tears. After half a minute, maybe a little more, that wears off and I realize that what felt so real just moments ago, was in fact just a dream. The other day I dreamt that my Mom told me to “stop being such a bitch all the time”. Just this morning I woke up thinking that I was best friends with a classmate, who I absolutely cannot stand. Once I woke up in the middle of the night, my cheeks and pillow wet from my tears because I thought my Dad had died. When I finally fell asleep again, I dreamt that my Mom passed away too, that morning I woke up as an orphan, so when I came downstairs I was so happy to see my parents sitting there.

I once visited a doctor, kind of an alternative doctor, because I had been ill-ish for 8 weeks and antibiotics did not help. I could tell she was quite the alternative doctor: she started to ask questions like ‘do you ever have weird dreams’, ‘do you sweat a lot’, ‘do you have itchy feet’? She then graded my personality silver. I tried convincing her that really my personality was GOLDEN, but no, that did not work out. The point is that ever since I visited that doctor, I just kept wondering about what those dreams had to do with my health. Or what dreams have to do with anything at all, since they hardly ever seem to make sense.

For quite some time I wrote my dreams down into a notebook that I kept on my nightstand. As soon as I woke up I would write everything I remembered about my dreams, thinking that maybe they would make more sense then. Recently I found that notebook, and I started reading. The strange thing was that from every dream, I could recall the exact feeling I had when waking up that morning. The best ones were the ones about traveling (and I can tell you it were a lot of them), when I woke up I felt like I had been away for 4 weeks, to Morocco, Egypt, Australia or the Dominican Republic and I would just feel so… Satisfied. Or content, or happy. Words cannot really describe the feeling that well. But I am pretty sure every single one of us has had those moments: when everything is just right.

Bottom line is: dreams may not have a function of themselves, but we can certainly give them one. Learn from the bad ones, and reminisce the good ones, to get that perfect feeling back when you need it.

Those people

It is during the tough times, the rough periods and grey eras of your life that you get to know the people around you best. You will find that some are there when you need an optimistic view: they will cheer you up when you are feeling down by making you laugh about silly YouTube videos. Some will let you sob in misery and acknowledge that it is okay for you to feel horrible, because life simply seems horrible at times: they will cry with you and play horrible dramatic songs that make everything seem even worse.

The persons, however, that you will appreciate most are the ones that can see not only what you want, but also what is good for you. Sometimes it is not okay to be sad about something for a long period of time, sometimes you just need someone to kick your ass, set you on fire and make you live again, even if that is not what you want.

Those people, the ones that always have your best interest in mind for the long term; the ones that have your happiness in mind, and not mere short-term satisfaction; the ones that will not only listen, but also argue with you and get mad at you:
those are the ones that we can call true friends.