Dreams. Some people love them, and some people hate them. And I'm not referring to the white chocolate bar from the 1990s. I do miss that bar...
I'm talking the phenomenon that happens during our sleep. The weird thing that takes us to new worlds or into fantastical memories.
Or it's something that can mess us up at a moment's notice.
The past few nights, since I've been able to have memorable dreams again, I've noticed a slightly worrying trend. The past 3 nights, I've had very realistic dreams. Not only have they felt realistic, they've featured myself in realistic qualities rather than the usual fantastical Joshua that tends to be seen.
And it's scaring me.
The past few nights' dreams have followed a similar trajectory, featuring one single person over and over again. And while I won't go into what happened in the dreams of wednesday and thursday nights, it's 2 memorable dreams I had last night that worry me greatly. One follows a similar theme to the previous two nights while one, which happened this morning after falling back asleep, doesn't fit at all and, frankly, I genuinely thought it was all real until a certain point.
It's worth noting now that both of the dreams I'm about to describe triggered some kind of anxiety attack. This is why I'm writing it down and sharing it. For catharsis as I've stupidly done something to trigger one again. Screw anxiety.
Here goes:
I'm out with my friend. (Who shall remain unnamed). We're in our hometown and we're just walking, chatting and laughing. Care-free. The inference is we've spent most of the day together and had a lovely time. Evidently, we'd decided we were hungry so we stopped by the fruit shop in town and I went in bought myself a banana and her, an apple.
As I went to pay, I looked out of the shop to find her and saw that she was being harassed by 5 men. All were around her age and she was visibly distressed. (When I say 'harassed', I don't mean anything physical but it was easy to see she didn't want this attention). Seeing this, I immediately ran outside and told the 5 guys where to go. Begrudgingly, they left us alone. I checked to see if she was ok and she was clearly shaken. Despite this, she had her apple and everything was fine.
We then end up in the Tescos in our town and we're looking around for stuff. (The inference is that we're having dinner together so we're just picking something to have). It's at this point that my friend starts to go weird. Not weird in the usual dream sense, but almost drunk. She starts to feel ill, faint and looks drunk. At this point, I start to panic. It's also at this point that she admits that she accepted a drink of water from one of the guys outside the fruit shop before. It's become clear that the water she drank was spiked with something and she was starting to feel the effects from it.
As I desperately try to get her to come with me and sit down somewhere in the shop, the 5 guys return. One of them hits me, I fall down, and another 2 start to drag me away from her. My friend is screaming for me as I get dragged away but is also trying to fight the effects of whatever she was spiked with. Although I've been attacked, I'm desperately trying to get free in order to help her. I lay there helpless as I'm dragged further and further away from her. No-one else in the shop either notices or tries to help us but this is the situation we're in. I get hit again and I fall down.
One of the guys dragging me lets me go and runs back to the main group. While these guys aren't doing anything physical to my friend, the threat of it is there and it's clear she's in distress. Continuing to fight the effects of the drug while trying to get to me to help me. I get up and run towards her but I'm pulled back by the remaining guy.
I look up at this guy and it's someone I went to school with. Someone I considered a friend for a time. He looks down at me and smiles while saying "stay down, Josh..." However, I refuse to and I try to fight him. I just about win, flooring him and running back to my friend. By this stage, the guys have noticed I've gotten free and they decide to grab my friend and run off with her. We're continuing to scream each others names in distress as she, and the men, disappear out of the shop. I'm left in the shop desperately calling her name as the door to the shop seems to get further away.
This is where I woke up. As I did, it was 7:28am and I was panicking, fighting back tears and hyperventilating.
The reason this dream has been on my mind all day is, not only because of what happened within it, but because the emotions I felt and woke up with were real. And it felt like I'd let this person down despite the fact it didn't actually happen. I felt helpless. Which is always a terrible emotion to feel.
I went downstairs, went to the loo and went back to sleep. Despite being coming out of what was an apparent anxiety attack, I managed to get to sleep.
However, my morning was about to get weirder.
****
Later on, I'm woken up by my housemate. He's shaking me hard so I wake up. There's fear on his face. He looks at me terrified. I ask him what's wrong and he tells me:
"Something's happened, you need to come and see this, but you mustn't panic, Josh, there's nothing you can do..."
I get up and we run into his room. We look at his computer screen and BBC News is broadcasting from it. We stare in horror as footage of a mushroom cloud is layered behind a BBC Breaking News ticker. The headline is clear:
"NUCLEAR HORROR IN SOUTH KOREA"
BBC News anchor, George Alagiah, calmly explains that North Korea have fired 2 nuclear warheads into Seoul, the capital of North Korea, and Busan, the second largest city. North Korean have ordered its troops across the border in a blatant continuation of the Korean War. I cry as I watch and I can feel myself start to hyperventilate. My housemate looks at me, grabs me, and tells me that I need to calm down. But I can't. The fear of what's going to happen next grips me and I start telling him that in less than two weeks, we'll be forced to fire our weapons and we will be the victims of a retaliation, depending on what side different countries take.
I run back into my room, scour my drawers and I find a brown envelope. I run back into my housemate's room and remind him that, in the envelope, is my Nuclear Attack Plan. A document I created late last year in order to facilitate different options should this scenario occur. I shout at him in a panic telling him that he need to pack the most important things and prepare to return home. I tell him that our current location is not safe and we need to return to our rural towns in order to increase chances of initial survival. He slaps me and tells me I'm overreacting but I don't back down.
The news broadcast, which seems to have taken over his computer, is continuing to explain what's happening with the situation as my housemate and I have an argument over my reaction. The news can very clearly be heard over our arguing and it's explaining that the UK has sent diplomats to China in order to negotiate a ceasefire and to ease tensions.
It's at this point, the screen on the computer changes. BBC News has gone, the screen has gone black. For a few moments, we stop arguing and we stare at it. Neither of sure where it's gone. Moments later, the Emergency Broadcast System appears and explains that a nuclear weapon is on its way to the UK.
My housemate looks at me panicked but I'm no longer panicked. Something's not right. I realise that the only warheads so far have been fired into South Korea. BBC News explicitly stated that no other warheads had been fired as of yet. Especially not from North Korea. Yet here the Emergency Broadcast system is.
I look back at my housemate, who's panicking, and asking why I'm no longer panicking. I then explain that it makes no sense for the UK to be attacked this soon after the initial nuclear blast in South Korea.
I reassure him it's all going to be ok and that we may be fine. The air raid sirens can be heard outside. I grab his shoulders and tell him to call his girlfriend if it makes him feel better and I run into my bedroom and text my friend in Southampton telling her it's been nice knowing her and to please stay safe if she can. I then phone my mum. My mum's crying down the phone as she tries to make sure I'm out of danger. I want to tell her I am but I tell her that the sirens are blaring outside and Southampton has probably been selected as a target. I tell her to stay on the line until such a time where it becomes impossible as we both come to terms with the fact I'm about to die.
I run back into my housemate's room who's on the phone to his girlfriend in tears. We tell our respective callers we love them, look at each other and say to each other it's only a drill...
We see a massive flash of light outside of his window, we hear a bang and suddenly, everything goes black.
****
I wake up realising that I was dreaming again and that I was in my bed. Everything was fine. I was alive, my housemate was alive and the house was still here. Nothing bad had happened.
****
There are a number of differences between the dreams.
Firstly, the two dreams follow the theme of helplessness. In the first dream, my friend was getting harassed and assaulted and I was physically unable to overcome the obstacle to help her. In the second dream, the world's about to come to an end and I can't do anything to stop it. In the situation of the second one, I was much calmer when the Emergency Broadcast came on because I knew that there was nothing I could do to prevent my fate. Or that of my housemate. I just tell him to phone his girlfriend and get his affairs in order before we're inevitably vaporized by the nuclear missile about to detonate in Southampton.
Secondly, while the emotions in both dreams were real, I could still recognise the fact that the first dream was just that. A dream. While it slowly turned into a horrible nightmare, I still had some notion that it was a dream. The second dream, however, I couldn't tell. It looked, felt and seemed so real that I accepted it as truth. I even felt myself being shaken to wake up despite it not happening. The second dream, as far as I was concerned, was 100% real. It wasn't until the BBC News feed got interrupted and the Emergency Broadcast came on. There's no way the UK would be attacked that quickly after a blast in South Korea that happened less than hour before. Until that point, as far as I was concerned, North Korea delivered on their threats to launch a pre-emptive strike against the South Koreans.
Thirdly, although both had different outcomes and situations, they both addressed key fears that I have. The first dream included someone I care deeply about being harassed, assaulted and more and I couldn't stop it. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to prevent what was happening to her. I have many friends and I care about all of them. If anything like this happened to them in real life I don't know what I'd do. But it highlighted the notion that I'm helpless, useless and, in some way, not good enough to be around them. In the second one, I confronted what I considered to be my worst fears right now. Dying and the notion of dying as the result of a nuclear strike on the United Kingdom. I've done so much research into nuclear weapons and the effects of them that I know exactly what'll happen if one fires. In fact, the Nuclear Attack Plan I confronted my housemate with in the dream exists. It's in the drawer next to me now. I hope never to use it but it's there just in case. Especially I'm not too far from a city that could be a considerable nuclear target.
But it has put one thing in perspective.
Although, in the second dream, my real nightmare scenario was coming true, I only panicked at the initial situation. I panicked when the news came through of the attack in South Korea but, the moment the Emergency Broadcast came on, the roles reversed. I was no longer panicked while my housemate was. I, somehow, managed to keep a focussed mind as his went to shit. As far as I was concerned, this was all real and I was about to die yet I was keep a cool head. Maybe because I realised that there was no use in panicking anyway.
In that dream, I managed to confront my fear. Which is strange. Even at, what I genuinely thought was the end of my life, I managed to remain cold and logical. I'm going to die anyway, I'm not going to die panicking. As Clara Oswald says in Face The Raven:
"Let me be brave. Let me be brave..."
As for the first dream, I didn't confront any fear in that one. In fact, it made that fear worse. But on reflection, it's shown me that the situation in the first dream is far more terrifying to me than the nuclear death I experienced in the second dream. Which, in a way, it actually progress for me.
My paranoia dictates I'm scared of dying. And, by putting me in the position where I 100% believe I'm about to die, I managed to keep a cooler head in that situation rather than watching someone I care about get attacked. And that's the progress. The fear of my friends being hurt scares me more than dying. Something which I hadn't realised until now. Until now I thought my fear of dying was king but it appears, to me anyway, that my love and care for my friends overrides that.
I've had realistic dreams before. In 2011, I had a dream that I actually grew up in Cardiff as opposed to me hometown and, it felt so real, I actually convinced myself that the Cardiff life was real and this realm was just a dream I had. And, in that dream, I had to die in order to return. Only I wasn't as scared of death as I am now...
But this dream wasn't as realistic as number two. Yet, still, I was more scared of the first dream than the second.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still scared. Even as I type this I'm still coming down from the utter fear I have of the first one alone. I even tried to recreate the BBC News report in order to visualise it and realise how stupid it all was but, it made it worse. Writing this has helped though. And that's what this particular post was designed to do.
Maybe I am making progress against my paranoia and my hypochondria?
Or maybe I've just come to accept that, against the other diseases that could ravage my body at any time, being killed in a nuclear explosion is my preferred method of dispatch?
Who knows. Either way, my dreams are scaring me at the moment. And I'm certainly sure that I don't like it.
Sweet dreams. Hopefully they're not too realistic.
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