You can say that I'm a dreamer...

I dream a lot. I mean literally--at night, in my sleep--I have the most intense, long, epic, detailed, and ridiculous dreams ever. People morph into other people, places turn into other places, but there is always some kind of sense to it all...until I try to explain it later.

I've been this way since childhood, and I'm pretty sure my friends in elementary school were positive I embellished and made up most of my dreams. And I probably did add a few embellishments about Justin Timberlake or Jake Epstein at some point. But Rachel, I sware, I did not make up that one about the dragon with curly clown hair in the suitcase at the airport.

My dreams are not necessarily based on what I thought about or watched before I went to bed. But they do often include elements of things I've watched or read, and usually include people I actually know. They try to sort through the chaos and sometimes solve inner conflicts...but in the most random ways. The people that pop up in my dreams are sometimes people I haven't seen in years, maybe since elementary school or people I barely knew in passing. I've met others who dream, but I've never talked to anyone who dreams in quite the same way as I do...(This is an open invitation to tell me if you can relate).

John Paul is actually kind of jealous of me because he can never remember his dreams. As I sit there trying to explain that in my dream my dad was Zeus and I was a demigod but he was mortal so we weren't allowed to be together and for whatever reason we had to fight off about 30 zombies to escape...he just shakes his head. I once had what I thought was a very deep and creative dream about what the afterlife is like only to wake up and realize is was just a variation on The Great Divorce.

To be honest, I like to dream...I occasionally don't want to wake up because I'm so involved in them. But sometimes it can be draining. For instance, my work load has been crazy busy the last couple weeks and I've found myself dreaming about work and doing work in my sleep in a non-logical way. I wake up absolutely stressed out because I was in the middle of doing something that now I think needs to be done immediately and hasn't even been started! Or, I dream about John Paul dying or fighting with me and wake up upset for no tangible reason. I've gotten used to this so it doesn't have any lasting effect on my emotions, but I do sometimes wake up and have to shake myself out of something that wasn't real but very much felt so.

What I hate the most though, is when I dream about people in my past that I miss or need to resolve something with. There is nothing more frustrating than waking up after spending time and reestablishing a solid friendship with someone you miss and were once close too only to realize that they have no idea.

This, in particular, seems to happen quite often. So if you're reading this...there is a good chance that I miss you or would like to know you better. Do you feel the same?