nowhere everywhere
Documenting the dreams I have at night through text and digital art.
No AI: Every piece is hand-drawn on a Magic Drawing Pad, taking anywhere from 10 to 80 hours per drawing.
Building a Chronology: I am starting from childhood dreams. Not drawn in chronological order, but published to create a timeline over time. Starting with these simpler dreams gives me space to adapt my skills before tackling the massively complex lucid dreams I experience today.
A Finite Archive: Out of thousands of past and future dreams, I will only draw the most important 300 to 400. Realistically, it is physically impossible to execute more in one lifetime, even if I make it to 100 years old, which is obviously, unlikely.
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For most of my life, I was caught in a cycle of vivid dreams/nightmares and insomnia. Despite therapy, medical investigations and medication, nothing worked until I changed my sleeping schedule.
My body is simply incompatible with being up in the morning. My current compromise is sleeping from 3 AM to 11 AM. When life requires me to be up early, I still need sleep aids, but because I am much more rested overall, it no longer taxes me the way my pre-2023 life did when I had to be up at 6 AM.
This shift opened the door to document my dreams.Welcome to Nowhere, Everywhere: the world I once ran from, believing I had to fit into the "real" one just to earn a decent night's sleep. It is a sanctuary that finally began to bloom the moment I stopped trying to fix what wasn't broken.
A psychological evaluation confirmed I don't suffer from a personality disorder. I am simply neurodevelopmentally different, just as every single one of us carries our own unique DNA. We weren't built for the molds we constructed under the umbrella of society. We didn't learn to honor our natural differences at all, we are barely scratching that surface. The tax this system levies on our well-being shows up differently for everyone:
For me: It manifested as a fractured sleep cycle and chronic insomnia.
For you: It might be the struggle to eat well, to rely less on technology, to make better financial decisions, to hold onto meaningful relationships or to stay afloat emotionally. etc.
Inner work is vital, but eventually, it illuminates a quiet truth: we aren't truly living, we are barely surviving. Real balance requires outer work, too. It takes raw courage to shatter forced expectations, abandon a system driven solely by profit and consumerism and reclaim what actually makes us human.
This space is an invitation to look within and to start a dialogue with people who have more experience in the research/medical/psychological and scientific side of dreams. And for the viewers, to have the courage to realize that if we are going to suffer anyway, we might as well suffer for us, not for all the things we won't take with us when we die.
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I was supposed to meet with some people in New York.
I found myself right at the start of the Black Desert. Obviously, it’s called that because the sand really is black. It was the first time I had ever reached this place. I had no idea how I got there, but since I had a specific destination in mind, I decided to rely on my phone again.
I searched for a route to New York. From where I was, I could only go by foot. It would take about a week, with stops to camp and halfway through, the road would lead through the desert. Then, I was supposed to go down into the sewers in the desert and walk through them until I reached New York.
I was strongly advised to travel only at night.
I’ve always been able to read in dreams, but it doesn’t work the same way as in real life. I’m only adding this note because late in life I found out that not everyone can. Some people didn’t believe me when I told them I could read. They thought it was a myth; but I personally know others who can read too, anyway.
I was never able in dreams to open a book and read it from start to finish in a single dream. I don’t remember every page. I don’t remember all the details. The text does change in various ways. But nonetheless, every single time I needed to read, I could. Like in this dream, when using my phone; the interface of the phone was completely intelligible.
Did I remember all of it? No.
Specifically, what I remembered were the boxes on the screen. At the top, I had selected Current Location. Under it was the box where I wrote New York using the phone’s keyboard. I pressed GO. I saw all of this clearly; I saw the map forming, with the advice to travel by night especially visible. All of this was 100% clear.
What I don’t remember is what happened when I first opened the maps app. It showed a preview of the world before anything was selected. I remember none of what was written there, only vague visual outlines of shapes, where the water was, etc. I also don’t remember what hour my phone displayed or what the battery percentage was.
I only received what was important for that moment.
However, that doesn’t mean I can’t read for long.
I’ll explain.
In real life, reading 100 pages in a sitting is just what I normally do. It’s casual. I can do more. I don’t read often though, but if I’m free, it’s like I finish a book in a few days; a week or two if the book is massive as well as complicated, like 600+ pages on history, medicine or psychology. Then I don’t read for a few months. Then I read again, and so on.
In dreams, I get a book and start reading. I read 10 pages; bam, random dream distraction. If I get rid of the distraction, I read another 10 pages and so on. But I don’t think I can read more than 50. I’m saying this by how it feels, because I definitely don’t remember the page number ever; I just somehow know.
The same goes for the text. I remember visually seeing and deciphering words, but not for the whole 50 pages. For that, I remember the essence of what I understood from reading them, not the experience of reading in itself.
In fact, I think distractions, even if I hate them because they interrupt me, also remind me of the act that I am in. It’s almost as if, with reading in dreams, I become one with what I read, whereas in real life, that only happens as imagination. You are still in reality, even if you get completely absorbed into the story you are reading.
I don’t know.
I don’t know anything.
Continuing the actual dream:
I plugged in my headphones. Of course, this phone had all my music, because back then, in real life, I actually used to manually download all my music.
I walked, ran, jumped, whatever I felt like, because I was completely alone. I kept going until I was too tired and hungry to continue.
I had a backpack packed with everything I needed. I set up camp and slept through the whole day, then continued the next night just the same. Slept through all the next day just the same.
On the third night, I found the sewers.
The map said they should be in the area, so I thought I’d just set up camp, eat, then search. As I was fixing my tent, I hit something metallic.
A sewer lid.
The sewer lid is a good example of scrambled text that was still intelligible to me. On the lid, it was written NEW YORK, but the N and E were reversed and all the letters in a word were glued together. Between the words NEW and YORK were three sun symbols, between which were two moons.
For me, this meant 2 nights/3 days; two full days of 24 hours and one day of only 12 hours?
I decided that I’d sleep here tonight. Tomorrow night, I would go down into the sewers and continue.
All this time, I exchanged updates on my phone with whoever I was supposed to meet. Everything was going according to plan. I specifically remember some of the message exchanges, but nothing more. I don’t remember who I was supposed to meet.
It was something along the lines of:
DC (dream character): You leave yet?
Me: I’ve already been in the desert for the past few days; the map says I’ll reach the Sewers soon.
DC: 😏
(After I found the sewers)
Me: OMG I just hit the sewers lid with my tent, be there in around 3 days! Keep u postedddddddddd
Up until this point, this adventure had been so chill. I was having such a nice time by myself, recharging in silence.
I don’t know how hot it was during the day because my tent was amazing. All I knew was that when I fell asleep, I fell asleep under stars and when I would wake up, the stars would still be there. It was always chilly.
I let my guard down because I was really enjoying myself and I almost fell asleep by the fire outside. I forgot to get inside the tent!
The cloaked figures from the Șanterie dream appeared. I haven’t drawn this one yet. They seemed fewer in numbers. They held me slightly above the ground, without harming me or touching me though. I felt this kind of electricity holding me; slightly buzzing and moving.
They asked me a question.
The dream turned black. I woke up, formulated an answer in my head, fell asleep, returned to where I had left off in the dream and answered the question.
They asked me another question.
The dream turned black. I woke up, formulated an answer in my head, fell asleep, returned to where I had left off in the dream and answered the question.
This continued exactly like this; being asked questions by them, me waking up and formulating an answer, then falling asleep and answering.
The thing is, I have no idea what we discussed.
When I woke up in reality for the last time, only the details you are reading are the ones that remained. And it was not after they were done interrogating me.
Now, obviously, I do not believe that some actual cloaked figures manipulated me into doing this. I have two hypotheses which, like always, I am curious to explore.
So this is just what I think with the information I have available now:
1. False Awakenings Loop
I had false awakenings, even if they felt extremely real; like during sleep paralysis, when you think you woke up and you can’t move and you don’t understand why because it feels like you actually woke up.
In reality, I do struggle with interrupted sleep because I’m very sensitive; my hearing is very keen and then falling back to sleep is hard. Since I was sleep deprived then, I think it is possible that I got stuck in a false awakenings loop until I actually woke up in real life when the dream ended.
2. Micro Awakenings
I did wake up, perhaps because I was overwhelmed, but they were like micro awakenings; like when you snooze your alarm instead of waking up, then go back to sleep.
I once called a woman who tattooed me by accident while I was sleeping. I have a password on my phone; I cannot call anyone without typing it. I have also given friends items while sleeping, like: “pass me the remote.”
But just like this dream’s specific occurrence, these other things only happened once. I never call people when I sleep.
Somehow, I called that woman.
Brain is weird.
Regardless of which hypothesis is true or even if neither are, I guess that symbolically my mind just wanted to isolate somewhere safe; my real bed; to actually think and respond.
This conversation, this interrogation with these cloaked figures, seemed important. In the sense that I was forcefully engaged in it, restrained, wanting to get it over with so I could continue my journey to New York.
As for the cloaked figures, I had no idea what they represented until a lot further in time than this dream. But I had other things to deal with. I was not lucid dreaming yet; I couldn’t pursue them in other ways than when they decided they wanted something from me.
After I answered their questions, they left me alone.
I slept two days in the dream.
The people I was supposed to meet left me multiple messages, but I still wasn’t late; they had time.
And here, maybe after so many false awakenings or micro awakenings, it was my body trying to stabilize the dream to keep me asleep, paired with my will to continue the journey to New York?
I told them I had some trouble at camp, but that everything was okay. I sent them a picture with my preview officially down the sewers.
The sewers were like empty subway stations with water in them, but the water was where the trains were supposed to be. It had electricity, food, drinks, everything. Lights, too, but it was totally, totally empty.
For the remaining days that I walked there, I didn’t meet a single soul.
That was amazing.
Even if I had that moment with the cloaked figures, they didn’t harm me this time and all of this silence was a warm weighted blanket. I could think. I could breathe. I could observe.
I was obviously fascinated that such a road trip to New York was possible, yet I still did not have that moment of “I’m dreaming.” It all felt natural. Of course you can get to New York through some sewers in the Desert; duuh 😂
When I got out of the sewers and saw that I WAS FUCKING ACTUALLY IN NEW YORK WHAAAAAAT, (close to Brooklyn Bridge), I didn’t even want to wake up.
Especially because, compared to most dreams, this one had a good resolution?
The last thing I remember, though, was telling the people I was supposed to meet that I arrived, then sending a picture of where I was.
I know they responded:
“omw.” I saw it as a preview notification on my lock screen.
And I woke up. Finally, for real!!!
Dream Date: 2012
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I was myself, but wrong. Weightless and breathless, suspended in a cold numbness, unable to feel anything about my situation. It’s not like I ever had a bubbly personality, but now I was gone. I was drifting down the corridor of a hospital; one semi-destroyed by some disaster, functioning despite it all.
I drifted with a hollow urgency, an urge to search devoid of memory or physical sensation. Turning left, I was in a corner, looking forward, towards the corner room and if I continued to the left, the hospital hall would end in a void emergency exit.
Another me, bloody, was sitting on a bed in the corner room. I stepped into the doorway to see clearly.
The other self on the bed was vomiting out her heart. I started feeling again, through the body, not through me who was watching. I felt the organ dislodge, then drop through my chest into my stomach like a brick in a pool of acid, before forcing its way up my throat and out my mouth. I felt every horrible, juicy, chewy texture, tasting iron and vomit. It was still beating as it went out through me and fell. It stopped when it landed on my body’s lap.
This made me realize that the observer watching was my soul, my consciousness? The me on the bed was my body, now dead.
I turned, closed the door and continued down the left corridor toward the void exit at the end. Near the exit, it became undeniable that the urgency of searching was the void’s calling. The closer I got, the more I felt it embedded in whatever I was not anymore. I shared a bond with it far stronger than any tie to my flesh. It did not matter that my corpse forced me to feel its agony. The void was everlasting.
I touched the exit door to push it more. I did not feel the door through the bodyless hand touching it. I felt the sensation through the cold, lifeless hand of the body left in the room behind me, through a part of me that could neither see the door nor move toward it. I stepped into the void and woke up. At 3am. I couldn’t go back to sleep after.
The worst part of the dream was not this occurrence. This was the first occurrence.
It kept repeating for a while; identical except for one detail: my body vomited a different piece of itself. Every internal organ, my teeth, my fingers, my toes, section by section, but only one piece per nightmare. Fingers, teeth and ribs came in sets. When my right femur tore through my throat, it was only the right one, the left one my body decided to keep.
Strangely, previously lost parts regenerated in the following iterations of the dream. In the next one after vomiting my heart, my heart was ok, it was just the liver. While vomiting the femurus, the remaining parts of my leg inexplicably reattached themselves directly to my hip, fully functional. I didn’t even understand what to worry about first? The intestines were the worst. They took plenty of time…
During the long period in which it repeated, I also had other dreams. It was a descendent route. In the first month it was most frequent, almost every day for the first two weeks. Then every 2-3 days. The problem was this: I would fall asleep, this dream would wake me up and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. This would allow me only 3h of sleep per night or less. Because when I was forced to be up in the morning (mostly 6am) I still couldn’t be in bed earlier than 00:00. When I had other dreams this would also happen, but less. I preferred to simply not be able to go to sleep than to wake up fucked up by this shit.
Somewhere along the way, I decided to break the cycle without having any idea how. The easiest thing to do was to not go to sleep at all, until I naturally pass out from exhaustion. That way, even if the method failed to stop the dream, I would at least be far too tired to remember it. Hopefully.
After pushing my body to the limit, I passed out and indeed remembered nothing. For several days I could sleep without any interruptions. Then I started dreaming again, but not this. Then the insomnia came back too (either not falling or staying asleep).
Two months later, this exact dream came back, but with a weaker grip. It returned less and less frequently, fading slowly, until it completely disappeared.
I don’t know if what I did worked, if the subconscious simply considered all the necessary parts were vomited or if, since in time newer dreams surpassed this one as intensity, it simply became irrelevant.
Dream date: 2011
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This dream is centered around a recurring character, but this is not how we met. We met one year earlier, in 2010. This dream takes place in 2011, but it was easier to draw than the one of our meeting.
After the first dream with her, she lingered in my mind longer than other characters. I kept wondering whether she was a symbol for my inner child, but it never felt that way.
What I feel toward her is a sort of maternal bond, even though I will never be a mother. That bond isn't about wanting to protect her. It is about the situations I find myself in with her.
Her name is Ellie.
In this dream, I found myself on a beach. I don't know whether the beach belongs to a lake, a sea or an ocean. The water in front of it is enormous. The beach itself is huge and shaped a little like a moustache. At the point in the middle, where both sides of the moustache meet, a wooden deck begins.
It extends out into the water. It continues so far that, from the beach, the end cannot be seen with the naked eye. Now it is night, so the deck seems to plunge directly into the darkness.
At either end of the moustache-shaped beach are enormous blocks of taller, rocky land and beyond them are other cities or regions.
There are a lot of people here, they are different species. It seems that some kind of celebration is taking place. Along both sides of the beach lie countless fancy vintage boats and ships. It is the new moon, yet the moon can be seen. Something is visible behind its dark side: a strange glow, as though the moon possesses a light of its own.
Everyone is dressed grotesquely, many of them don't look like ordinary humans to begin with, even without costumes. These costumes make this moment unsettling. People divide into groups and light little fires. Then they sing and dance. From the fires, they take things that are burning and throw them out into the darkness.
They are not lampions. When they pull them from the flames, they look like little balls of fire. Some of them, once thrown, begin floating upward into the sky. Others fall into the water. I stand there watching everything unfold when somebody suddenly trips me and runs.
It’s Ellie.
She was about ten years old when I met her. She has ashy short hair, blue eyes and pale skin. Her figure and her face are unforgettable, even though in this particular dream I never get a clear look at her.
She is wearing a pale blue dress.
I ran after her, toward the water, pushing my way through the crowd. Dia de los Muertos? I ask myself this, as I notice more decorations while running. But it's not Halloween yet?
I don't know what date it is in real life within the dream. I only know that it is close to Halloween. I noted the dream somewhere toward the end of October, although the exact date wasn't specified when I made this journal entry. If I search for the last new moon in October 2011, it says October 26.
Ellie jumps from the beach onto the wooden deck floating above the water and runs into the darkness. I keep chasing her.
When she has gained enough distance, I scream for her to stop.
She stops.
There is nothing but the new moon and a sky full of stars above us. We are standing in dark water on a deck with no balustrade. The deck is shaky beneath our feet and our movements bring water over it.
The moon and darkness here are different. They have a depth I cannot grasp in real life.
I slowly keep getting closer to Ellie.
“Why are you running?” I ask, still moving toward her, while making no sound.
She answers in her trembling, sweet Irish accent. “King o’ da woodz. A can’t stay here. He can’t catch us togetha’. If he gets may, least he not get yee. Not yee.”
“Together we are stronger,” I say. I'm getting close!
“Nay!” she says. I touch her and she teleports us into the forest, in a region I have never, ever been before.
Ellie is in a beautiful cemetery town. I am on the other side of the gate. The gate is locked for me and my quest to get into that place begins.
Remember this. From this point on, many years will pass before I am finally able to get in.
I try everything I can think of to get over the gate. Ellie tells me that those with blood in their veins don't pass. Then, suddenly, I find myself somewhere else. I am back on the water, but now the darkness is foggy.
The fog allows me to walk on the water, as though I am moving through a sandstorm. Beneath me is the enormous body of water. Above it is an immense sea of fog that’s not a fog. It is made of billions of souls wandering without resolution. If I stand still, I can hear them. I can feel them.
I try running back toward civilization, but I realize that this is purgatory. Another layer on top of the previous one, the place where I ran along the deck from the beach into the darkness, even though both layers exist in the same place.
I’m trapped me here. I stop running. I stand still and take in the purgatory around me. It is torture. The souls are killing me. But somehow I feel that, slowly, I can begin to see the deck again if I can picture it clearly enough in my mind.
So I try. I hold the image of the deck in my mind, dissociating from the torture of the souls.
Whoever Ellie called the King of the Forest didn’t like that.
When I finally get back onto the deck, on the side nearest the beach, everything becomes dark and he starts counting in the void.
At that time, I was not certain the voice counting is actually the King of the Forest. That is only a supposition because of what Ellie said. Future dreams confirmed it.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Zero.
And I wake up.
The shitty part is that the counting made me realize I have heard it before and forgot. I had remebered then because we had contact, even though I didn't see him. After that, I began noticing it every time.
For years.
There is also a distinct sensation that comes with it. I feel as though I am being pulled into a void. Then I start standing up inside it. After I am 100% standing, I wake up.
After this dream, I didn't write about the counting in every dream, even when if it still happened. I only noted when there was something new related to the phenomenon or to signal that it is still happening and eventually, I noted when it stopped.
Reviewing everything I wrote over so many years is a surprisingly complex process. For most of those years, I didn't know what I was supposed to pay attention to. The consistency varies.
I have completely forgotten some dreams or parts of some dreams and reading them now, while reviewing them, brings back many lost pieces.
I don't review the dreams chronologically. I review them as I draw. If I have more time, I pick whichever one feels easier to work through at that moment. The way this story unfolds is partly a surprise to me too. It is like having all the scattered pieces of a puzzle, without the box they came in.
I can tell what kind of picture I'm looking at, if it’s a landscape or a portrait. I can tell what kind of setting it has. How many characters are in it. I notice those details as I put the pieces together.
But the rest is still a mystery. I have pieces. I just don't know the whole picture.
Dream date: October 2011
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Two years of continuous dreaming, I was starting to notice the boundaries of geography. Even before realizing I was in a dream, I could distinguish a real place from a location carved out of the Nowhere Everywhere.
The difference lies in resonance. When I dream of a real location, like my bedroom with the demon in the mirror, the surroundings appeared authentic despite other elements that defied logic. The atmosphere of those places felt grounding, defined by a sense of impending arrival rather than presence. They carried the quiet weight of knowing you ought to head home soon, unbothered, because home was only ten minutes away.
The Nowhere is different. Its locations remain rigorously consistent with their own internal rules, cycles, history and timelines? No matter how bizarre they are. This is the fundamental difference. A real location has absurd symbols thrown in; or mixed in with the rigorous real structure. A dream world location has an absurd structure which, within its subjective bounds, makes sense. You just have to learn the language.
To walk through dream world locations is to feel permanently lost in a maze, while following an invisible map you can’t understand, but which you feel. The sensation is difficult to articulate; it’s not just quirks like the endless half-floors instead of full ones. Reality itself feels broader, heavier, flexible and like everything is fucking, literal or not with anything, everything? All of this paired with a strange, profound sense of belonging I experienced nowhere else.
Of course, it is my mind, so it is comforting to know that there is at least one place where I don’t have to be what I am not, even if apparently we didn’t start on good terms?
This dream was concentrated in one of the regions I visit the most, up to this day, within the Nowhere: the Forest.
The Forest functioned like a collection of veils, layered like an onion. One could traverse this wood across entirely different realities, at the same time or at different times or never. If another soul stood in the exact physical coordinates as I did, but in a parallel veil, we would never meet. At most, we might feel as though we were “haunting” one another in a subtle sense which, without proper understanding, would pass completely unnoticed or would evolve in psychotic delusions of divine grandeur.
I could not tell if it was still the same winter or the next. For a long time, the Nowhere had been locked in a harsh, unrelenting winter, though I never knew if this was an anomaly or simply the nature of that world.
It’s complicated. When I wrote this dream I was not thinking about this the way I think now. It was something I wanted to get rid of and for a long time, the only details I paid attention to were the ones I couldn’t ignore. I didn’t keep track of seasons at first. Especially since I also had dreams in other locations, in the future or the past locations, real or not, uninfluenced by this winter.
I was just already anxious about where I might land upon closing my eyes, so I was surprised to find myself in the Forest. Still winter, yet silent, peaceful and beautiful.
It was baffling. Though I was not lucid, my stomach clenched like a fist. I knew better than to trust the stillness in the air.
I resumed my never ending search for shelter. After two years of dreams where I was shown objectively how little power I have to influence anything for my own good or protection, I held onto the hope that finding a place to call my own would grant me a refuge from the nightmares. My strategy was: stop the nightmares, maintain and while doing that find out what to do about insomnia.
It fucks with my mind how even without achieving lucidity, this single symbol persisted. And it is very obvious why. I never felt at home when I was awake. Because home isn’t a place. And when I found my home in real life, eventually I found it there too.
The snowy forest was reflecting the diffuse, warm glow of the sun. The light and white hurt my eyes with the same sharp discomfort it caused in the waking world. Faint, distant bird songs were mixing with soft gusts of wind, which sounded like whispers while brushing between the frozen leaves and branches.
As I was walking more mesmerized by the landscape than having a direction, in the distance, I a hole? Lake? Holake?! Looking like a smudge of tar in the snow. This has fuck this.
As I got nearer, it revealed itself as a strikingly round lake; an almost perfect circle. The water was some black liquid, no smell, very still, like an obsidian mirror or a void.
Like any idiot wants to press the button, I wanted to touch it with the tip of my finger.
I’m going to smoke a cigarette by the lake, see what that thing is and be on my way, I thought.
I stopped at the edge and smoked like half of it, starring.
Holding the cigarette between my lips, I eventually crouched into a squatting slav pose and extended my pinky to touch the liquid. Ok, I admit there are many times in dreams and in life when I get in trouble just because I am curious. However, I want to make a note and say that at least when it comes to dreams, I just want to understand WHY THE RESPONSE IS THIS EXTREME.
A single droplet made contact with the tip of my finger and instantly, the lake came alive in the form of many arms which started pulling me in. I managed to keep standing on my feet to avoid being immediately submerged.
In the next breath, I was in the middle of the lake trying to keep my face afloat. The black liquid swarmed over me, coiling into a mass of part-fluid, part-creature arms that fought to drown me. It felt nothing like water; it possessed the density of hot tar without looking the part.
The longer my organic matter was in contact with this shit, a burning, corrosive reaction was literally dissolving me. Dissolved parts became cold and sticky. I figured the arms had to hold me only long enough for the reaction to start. Too late.
Once fully submerged, the hotness of the corrosive parts mixed with the cool stickiness of the dissolved parts became violently fizzy. That’s when the pain stopped.
Up until that point was…unbearable. In the corrosive void, I instinctively tried to wipe the substance from my eyes, but with the liquid coating my hands like a toxic, symbiotic, second skin, the gesture only doubled the agony. I felt the extremities of my body melting. Starting at the joints, where the bone sat closer to the surface or where skin was thinner, veinier. It seeped through me like hot milk soaking bread.
My lips shielded my teeth for a bit; my teeth, in turn, protected the interior of my mouth for twice as long. I felt the dissolved remnants of my own arms pass right through my torso, because they were no longer fully attached to me and my torso was holes. I became a chunky stew, cooking into a black soup-goop, before I could even scream. Useless. Absolutely fucking disgusting.
Within a few moments after the violent fizziness, fanta madness! After my remains became bubbles and the pain disappeared, a strange lightness took over me and very much like in the Cancer Clock dream, I found peace, but this time no one came after me. This time that comfort was as scary as what got me there. This made me feel worse.
Those were the last glimpses I remember.
Unlike other recurring locations and symbols in the Nowhere, this was the first and last time I ever dreamed of the Black Lake, at least up until 2026. I have passed by it many, many times since, but no other story has taken place there; from then, until now.
Dream date: 2010
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I was skipping school, wandering through town with friends; the kind of thing that felt ordinary back then. But something was wrong. I don’t mix worlds. I never have. And yet there they were: three classmates, two artsy acquaintances and my two actual friends. These were people who, in real life, should never have crossed paths and thankfully didn’t, excepting this dream.
Somehow, we were all searching for the same abandoned building. Each of us learned about it separately, through strange and untraceable means and none of us expected to meet the others on the way. But we did.
We met on the street where the building was, each group coming from a different part. From the forward path and from the right. The building was on the right as I walked with my friends from backward to forward. Amongst the other villas and blocks on the street, our destination looked like “another brick in the wall” of interbelic architecture, each brick with its own personality.
The one we wanted to enter was dirty beige with red accents from brick, ornaments or paint. The roof was in the same red nuance as the accents. The shape of the building itself was unclear, it seemed “buried beneath” the others. We could have gotten a better view of it if we went through the back on the other side of the street, but there were more backdoors there and it was difficult to understand which door belonged to which building. The narrow front door before us however, was a fancy dark brown, marked in streaks of the same red nuance. There is something about this dream reality loving half floors and odd doors. To get in, you had to go down three steps.
There was surprisingly little graffiti on the building, especially when compared with the rest. The red streaks on the door looked suspicious to me, almost as if they had a special shine. I brushed it off because in real life, there are plenty of things interfering with my vision and I assumed that it is the sun reflected in it which makes it seem so.
(This location didn’t remain buried. This dream started a process I was unaware of. Around 10 years later this building would emerge again in other dreams, as the layered apartment. At first, I climbed in it from the inside of my aunt’s place and I didn’t notice. Then, later in my life, I had a dream with a roommate I had back then in real life. She is an actress and we moved together there. That’s when I stumbled upon it from the outside again, through the same narrow door, on the same quiet interwar street with the same marks of red paint, faded now, corroded and without the door being locked, just closed. This layered apartment is a pocket, a bridge to a private area within the reality, which acts like a parallel. Meaning that on the other side, it would seem empty even if you are within. I don’t know how it was created or why. It has a terrace, checkered floor, a backyard with a view to a flat tall block, dark corners and many other things and rooms which will be revealed when I get to those dreams.)
The door had a lock, some nailed in planks over it and debris. While brainstorming how we should try to open the door, it became clear why it was these people. Each had a role. One of my friends liked to pick locks and stepped forward without hesitation to work the mechanism, after the others removed the planks and debris.
While waiting for the lockpicker to do the magic, everything paused. The other friend lit a cigarette in this first, still moment in the dream. I became aware of everything around me, but not lucid, that happens too much time later: the sunset bleeding in the city, the distant hum of the streets and the soft wind brushing my face, carrying the faint trace of smoke, its density and smell. I inhaled what lingered in the air, even though I wasn’t a smoker back then; and finally, the lock opened! The others pulled, not against weight, but against resistance, the old door stitched to its dust and dirt.
Inside was a narrow hallway that led us into a cave. The entrance was larger than the street itself. It shouldn’t have fit inside that building. People hesitated and fear split the group. The ones from school turned back. The rest of us went on.
The acquaintances faded first, swallowed by the darkness in the cave. My friends stayed and together we reached an intersection deep within. I don’t remember exactly how we knew, but we all understood that at the end every path led out. The only difference was how. We had no idea what we were going to encounter and there was tension. If that tension was fog, you could slice it. Each route was somehow designed. Tailored. The fastest path was also the narrowest and it was mine, because I was the only one small enough to fit.
There was a long discussion. I remember sitting down at some point, exhausted from waiting, from listening and from the weight of the decision. Frankly I didn’t understand why my friends cared so much.
Eventually, we split, each of us walked on a different path outside the cave.
My path led me to the bedroom I had in real life, exactly as it used to be, so I thought I had woken up. When I sat up in bed, directly across the room on my desk was the mirror with blue cats painted along its beige frame. While my bedroom didn’t change, there were new items.
In front of the mirror lay the book. The one I hadn’t stolen in that other dream with my great-grandfather. On the wall to my left, next to the windows, was a wooden cross with a red string attached to it. I touched the string and a high-pitched sound started torturing me. At the same time, the red thread multiplied, stretching across the room like laser wires in a cartoon vault, guarding something. When the thread stopped spreading, the sound stopped. Because of the force of the thread the cross has been turned upside down. That’s when I saw the woman’s face in the mirror.
I felt it immediately; the pull toward the book. I got up slowly and carefully, making sure not to touch the threads. As I moved between the bed and the desk, my eyes never left her. She was beautiful. Ginger hair, straight and cut into a long bob, freckles scattered across her face, full lips and a tiny hole in her chin. Her vibe however, was very off, it gave me goosebumps. I didn’t trust her at all. When I got closer, to reach the book, I saw her eyes were completely black.
I said nothing. I didn’t dare. I felt like any acknowledgment or interaction might make her step out of the mirror.
The book sat beside her, but it wasn’t hers. I knew that instinctively. When I picked it up and nothing happened, that confirmed it; she had no claim over it.
I opened the book and at first, it was empty. Then, as I tried to read, words began to form on the page. Not written before; written as I read. The book was creating itself in real time. It told me what to do.
“Trap with blood. Bite tongue. Draw symbol.” Followed by words in a language I didn’t recognize; not Latin and not anything I had ever encountered. I followed the instructions.
Her mouth split into rows of sharp, monstrous teeth and she bit the arm which I used to draw the symbol, the right arm as I am right-handed. I don’t remember the symbol. She was rapidly feeding on me, like I was pork chops with bones, but my bones were jelly to her.
I decided to fight back. If I was her meal, then she was mine. I dropped the book and bit into her face as she was now getting closer to my shoulder! The pain in all this was…WAS. I think me biting her too helped me to stop thinking about the fact that I feel how she is chewing off my bones, how they crack and turn to mush and then she swallows and continues. There is so much detail in every dream I have that what I write is a highlight.
I didn’t win, but neither did she. She appeared in only one other dream, close to this one in time. And then she was gone.
When I died, the most wonderful relief compared to that fucking shit, I woke up for real.
Dream date: 2009
-
Perhaps it makes sense that it took me so long to willingly lucid dream. In many of my early dreams reality would remain exactly as it is until suddenly, it twisted. Yet even when it twisted, somehow still made sense to me. Reality is already absurd even when you are not dreaming. I am simply not surprised easily. Not bothered, just curious.
I was in Herăstrău Park with a girl I knew in real life. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon that sat right at the edge of evening. Golden hour. The air carried that first chill of the season, cold yet cozy. Early autumn dressed the trees in green and the faint shiver in the air signaled that night was preparing to arrive.
We were simply walking through the park with no particular plan. I grabbed a coffee from a small shop and when we grew tired, we sat on a bench surrounded by clusters of trees.
We talked about things I do not remember. Casual conversation.
I have noticed something about memory and dreams. I can remember conversations within dreams with decent accuracy if something does not make sense or if something inside me reacts strongly. If we talk about the weather or your shoes I will remember the shoes and the weather visually, yet the exact wording used and the rest of the small talk disappears.
At some point when I had almost finished my coffee she asked if I was okay. She said I looked more faded than usual.
I knew immediately that I had to lie.
At that period in my life honesty would not have helped me (this is subjective). What I had learned up to that age was that truth and lies are punished or tolerated for the same reason. It has nothing to do with whether one is real and the other is not. Sadly that part does not matter.
Truth and lies are punished when they arrive at the wrong moment. When they arrive at the right moment, they are accepted because of the influence they carry whether consciously or not.
This is structurally how I naturally think without believing in good and evil as fixed forces. When I knew, in the dream, that I had to lie, it was because the truth would have been punished if it arrived then. The lie would act as a pillow for the truth to land on later.
I told her I was sick. I invented a story about a suspicious cold or perhaps an allergy. Something vague enough to explain the way I looked.
The real reason I had begun fading was something entirely different.
I felt intensely that I was being watched. Not casually. I was hunted. Like prey.
I wanted to run, but where? While listening to her speak, I kept scanning the area. My eyes moved through the trees searching for whoever was following me.
Then from somewhere between those trees she appeared. The Yellow Lady in the portrait.
She said she was my mother and that she had come to pick me up because my medical results were out and I was very sick. She continued the lie even though she was not actually a mother symbol and did not resemble my mother.
Her eyes were red and she wore yellow clothing in a style that felt as if it belonged to the nineteen twenties. Strange, unnerving, alluring even. I felt oddly comforted by her arrival. I sensed that I could be somewhat honest with her. She was not the one following me. Her presence carried danger of its own, but of a different flavor, a different entity.
She led me into what looked like a room made from walls of leaves. At the center stood a fountain. Somehow the place remained inside the park while also existing outside the universe.
There; she bit her tongue and allowed blood to drip into the last mouthful of coffee in my cup. After I drank it, she bit my neck. The sensation felt like a hickey, a sexy one.
The moment I stepped into that secluded place I was already certain that she was a vampire.
When I swallowed the bloody coffee I felt it spread from my neck down to the tips of my toes like a sickly electricity. Then her bite extended through my body in waves that felt like internal earthquakes.
After every wave something inside me changed.
My eyes burned.
My bones seemed to be consuming my muscles.
My muscles hardened into stone.
My mind began hearing and sensing everything within the entire park. The pulse of every body, every movement, every breath. I could zoom into anyone and slip into them like possession. Yet, like a camera I needed to press an imaginary mental trigger to take control.
Then I accidentally locked minds with my stalker.
He was a black man with dreads longer than his body. He moved through the park with impossible speed, using parkour and crossing distances as if gravity barely applied to him.
I had no idea why he was hunting me.
I forced him out of the mental lock and returned to the Yellow Lady. She handed me a small obsidian mirror.
When I looked into it I saw my new self.
My eyes were still reforming, red mixed with black while the white had almost vanished. My mouth had fangs and I was hungry.
She told me that I had to kill the man hunting me. She said she had done this because otherwise I would not have had a chance.
I asked why he was after me.
She looked puzzled, thinking that I already knew. Nobody else did and it was quite peculiar if I did not.
I asked why it was peculiar.
This is the only part of the conversation I remember word for word.
“Predator goes after prey. In this chain naturally you two do not meet. Why…? If you are not prey? I made you a predator to survive.”
“But we met just now even if it was only a glimpse.”
“Run.”
So I ran.
I was starving.
The faster I ran the hungrier and angrier I became. My body moved faster than a car.
I ran until Piața Romană. It took less than three minutes.
When I reached the intersection, in the fraction; of a fraction; of a second it took me to cross, a car hit me.
I got up and continued.
Another car hit me.
Then another.
Then another.
Then another.
Then another.
It was a domino chain of collisions, as if the world itself punished me for skipping time through speed. Fuck my life, right?
I still made it through.
Now I was running toward Universitate, slower this time because I was injured.
He was right behind me; above me, almost like a plane.
He grabbed me within another fraction; of a fraction; of a second.
I woke up.
Months later in real life something strange began happening. I started feeling pressure above each of my canines. Something pointed.
Within a few more months my bone canines had grown fully over the first ones. They locked the old teeth between them and kept them in place until this year when the last old tooth was removed. Anyone who has known me knows that I have natural vampire fangs.
What fascinates me is the possibility that my body somehow knew. That it chose the symbol of vampirism to signal a real change happening within it.
The dream happened when I was twelve. Puberty had begun. How could the body inform the mind of a child about what was happening inside it, while that mind was still developing? Perhaps through symbols like these. Frankly, I have no idea, I’m just observing.
I am writing and drawing these dreams to see if there are overlooked patterns that could hold scientific and/or philosophical / psychological value.
Even if my dreams are creations of my own mind rather than objective reality; my aim is to stand at the border that translates human symbolism into something that can eventually be used scientifically. I do not engage with the divine or the supernatural and I do not wish to attribute paranormal meaning to this phenomenon.
In my subjective and singular opinion, every mystery and every unexplained event is not mystical. It only appears mystical because we are not yet fluent in nature’s language. How could we be? We are illiterate in our own languages.
Spirituality is not mystical either, not to me, it represents the intimate bond between beings.
Perhaps by bringing my dreams into reality I can help understand a small fragment of that universal language.
This was not the last dream in which my body seemed to send a symbolic message.
This is only the beginning.
Dream date: 2009
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I still had found no creatures I could count on and no place to stay.
The weather was harsh. In some areas it was still biting winter, but for the most part, it was a relentless, cold rain; sometimes turning to ice. I was soaking wet, shivering most of the time from the lack of proper clothes or shelter. Strangely, food was not a problem. I had already discovered that in this world, stealing and killing had only immediate consequences, which could be easily avoided. There was no law like in the real world.
Eventually, my wandering brought me to a small, forgotten town. The street beneath me was paved with cubic stones, but they behaved weirdly, shifting and changing into themselves without ever really becoming themselves.
I wanted to break into the most secluded building I could find. A tall, narrow, wooden house squeezed tightly between brutalist concrete blocks, a dead stick lodged in concrete. The massive structures flanked it perfectly, protecting it from the elements. Outside the front door, close to neighboring buildings, into this secluded architectural corner, stood a single tree and a green bench.I opened the front door carefully, it was not locked. I did not want to be heard, nor did I want to let the weather inside.
Everything, both inside and out, was crafted from wood. To my left was the kitchen. On the wall hung a picture calendar that read October 1989, though no specific day was marked and the house didn’t seem that old. At least, not all of its elements did. Returning to the entrance, directly ahead of me, was a slightly spiraled staircase.
The architecture made sense in its nonsense? Half a floor up, on the right side, lay the living room and the bathroom. Another half floor above that, situated perfectly in the center, was the bedroom. The ceiling was unnaturally high everywhere. Unlike normal buildings, the floors/rooms were not stacked on top of one another; instead, each room, no matter its elevation, reached all the way to the roof, but no room started at the exact same level. For example: the bathroom and living room were on the same floor, but I still had to go two steps up to enter the bathroom.
I checked every room. Nobody had been there for a long ass time. The design of the house was…when I say it was protected from the elements, I mean there was not even dust. I could tell it hadn’t been inhabited for ages based on the style of the things left around, even though the decor was a strange mix of eras.
While standing upstairs with my back to the bedroom, looking toward the front door, I noticed another object in the house not made of wood. Hung high on the wall, above the huge window, next to the entrance was a round, white clock. I didn’t expect it to work and it didn’t.
There were two chimneys: one in the kitchen and one in the living room. I broke the wooden chairs in the house to build fires in both. Breaking them was fun. The moment the wood caught fire, the whole place suddenly had electricity too.
I took the warmest bath imaginable! I couldn’t find any real clothes, only pajamas and bathrobes, but there were plenty of clean towels and fresh bed linen. I washed my ragged clothes and climbed into bed. There was a TV in the room and it definitely didn’t look like it belonged in 1989. As the hours passed, I felt a strange weakness creeping over me. However, it was one of the first peaceful moments I had ever known. I didn’t give it much thought.
In real life, too; at that exact point in my existence, peace was an anomaly. Most of the time, when I didn’t have vivid dreams like this, I couldn’t sleep. That quiet moment in the narrow wood house, even if it wasn't real, was the only sanctuary I had. My waking life was not terrible enough to scream about; no, it was just slowly eating away at me without me being aware of it.
Just before falling asleep in the dream, I thought that for a glimmer of a moment, I saw the white clock move. But I brushed it off, leaving it at: dreaming in dreams is weird as fuck.
When I woke up the next day, I was completely bedridden. So sick, it kinda blew my mind. There was a small window beside the bed and I leaned out to vomit into the cold air. Still, I gave myself the benefit of the doubt, deciding I deserved a day of rest. So, I slept again. Each time I slipped away, I found myself in a peaceful void, like an eternal bed.
When I woke next, I had no idea how much time had passed. Maybe days. The cold, gloomy weather was gone.
The second thing I noticed was the clock. It was spinning rapidly now and I was surprised that the sickness which blew my mind earlier got even worse. Somehow, I knew it was cancer. I couldn't say why specifically, maybe just because it runs in my real bloodline. By the end of the day, the realization hit me: I was going to die alone in the most obscure, cozy place imaginable. Haha.
It took me completely by surprise, but I did not fight it. I didn’t really want to? My body had no needs left; I only felt pain. All I could manage to do was watch TV and sleep. Miraculously, my favorite shows, movies and animations were always playing on the screen.
Somewhere through the heavy haze of my sickness, people I knew began arriving. They took care of me and whispered their goodbyes. They were so sad and I remember thinking how strange their grief was, because all I wanted was for them to leave. Let me sleep. When I sleep, there is no pain. And here, I could sleep forever. I didn't have to care…
Eventually, they did leave, slowly, in time, one by one. They dropped by less and less as I grew sicker and my strength weathered away. In my last clear moment of consciousness, I was watching the girl in Pulp Fiction.
I don’t know how long I slept in that embrace. It felt like being small again, like a child falling into a darkness that was taking the shape of pure bliss. It was the kind of bed that could fuck over the monsters under it. I heard and saw no monsters this time, but…
Before almost reaching the profoundest point; the place where what is I would no longer exist, there was a last visit. I was too far gone to perceive anything concretely, but a sudden gentleness grabbed my hand.
An…other hand?
I had to remember, how to remember, what touch even felt like; almost all of my senses were entirely gone before this point. This hand was colder and larger than mine. I have tiny hands, by general standards. This doesn’t tell me anything.
This coldness. Like magnets, a negative touched another negative. The contact created a violent kind of electricity that instantly split us apart, destroyed the house and threw me out into the open. These “overload” reactions are a reoccurring symbol showing itself in varied forms. I can trigger this alone (but not truly willingly) or objects, other presences, the natural environment, the place I am in, etc. The situation I’m in seems to determine through what means this happens, but it happens often.
Suddenly, I was barefoot, in pajamas, standing in the pouring rain. Except outside was now scorching HOT and I felt like a freshly fried chicken, barely making sense of my non-real reality and then I woke up in real life.
This rubbed me wrong. I couldn’t sleep for about a week after that. I wasn't afraid of the pain or the state of coming back to life. I don’t believe in that, I didn’t care enough.
I was terrified to feel that comfort again. It felt like a warning that I had to seek it forever or to love the pain? To forget? I did not want to find out any answer through any other symbol. I didn't understand it; I just thought, "this is bullshit" and wanted to sleep. Eventually, I passed out and I DID NOT REMEMBER ANYTHING from that sleep.
But it didn’t last long. It never did, then. Until either a dream or insomnia decided to enter the game. I wondered if they roll a dice or what?! I guess it also depends on my brain's available resources to run either of them. I don’t know.
During this project, I will have more questions and what-ifs than answers. No. How’s this: I have no answers. I am lost, mapping my arm's length and in years of doing that, I got to map a lot and not nearly enough. What even is enough? Why, what, how, when, sense, nonsense, time and any other inquiries you may have; this is an invitation to discover, because I have no idea.
Dream date: 2008
-
The night had caught up to me in the unforgiving winter in the middle of nowhere.
To my left were hills covered in snow. To my right, hills covered in snow. Not a soul in sight. The moon was bright and full, like a freezing sun overwhelming the already infinite number of stars scattered across the sky.
I was freezing and looking for shelter. Each step felt heavier than the last, as I pushed forward through the sea of white, while the hills slowly rose higher and higher in altitude. My breath burned my lungs and the cold pierced through my clothes as if the night itself had teeth.
Then I saw it.
At first, only a thin trail of smoke above the highest hill in my sight. I continued my way upward through the snow and more of the tiny wooden house began to reveal itself under the moonlight. The roof appeared first. Then the porch. Then the shape of someone sitting there.
With the last bit of energy left in my body, I rushed toward the front of the house.
An old man was sitting on the porch. He resembled a fatter version of Eustache from Courage the Cowardly Dog. In front of him was a chessboard, but in his hands he held playing cards, all Aces and there were dice around.
I asked him if I could spend the night.
He seemed not dead? His eyes moved and they rested on me long enough to prove he understood what I had said. But he did not say or do anything.
At that point I was practically dying from the cold, so I no longer waited for permission. I went inside and got myself warm. I made myself a cup of something hot and sat down on the bed that I would sleep in.
In front of me, sitting on the floor, on the fur rug, appeared a little pale boy with blue eyes and dark hair, dressed completely in white. I greeted him and tried to talk to him. I do not remember what I said.
He turned his expressionless head towards me, without flinching with any other body part, stared and then turned back to watching out the window, as before my interruption.
Someone knocked on the door. I stood up and opened it.
There was a blonde teenage girl with blue eyes, dressed in a red summer dress even though it was freezing. She had that fake innocent look. The type of girl who looks like an angel, but whose face carries a sourness that betrays something cruel underneath. The kind of sweetness that feels wrong.
She wanted to convince me to let her in to get her brother, the little boy. What felt strange was that she did not simply step inside. She remained outside and waited for me to allow her in.
So I closed the door in her face. During all this time the old man on the porch had not moved one bit.
The moment the door slammed shut, something changed. Outside the silence was broken by the girl turning into some creature. It sounded rabid and started raging, hitting and scratching the door. Thrashing against the wood with violent desperation. The door was indestructible, even though it looked frail.
I looked toward the boy again. He had not moved. He was still sitting on the floor staring at the window exactly as before. His pale face showed no fear and no curiosity. Only a quiet patience as if he had always known what would happen.
Outside the creature continued its furious struggle through the freezing night.
And the old man on the porch never moved.
That’s all I remember.
Dream date: 2008
-
The earliest real memory I have is not visual, despite my visual thinking. It is the sensation of intruding; of spontaneously finding myself somewhere I was never meant to be, without anyone knowing, but me.
One of my early dreams unfolds like this.
I find myself in a recently deserted building, stepping out of a wooden elevator that is small like me, yet older than my entire family. I have no memory of what came before, only the certainty that I cannot go back the way I arrived.
I step out onto a random floor. I didn’t press any buttons. I had no destination, only questions.
To my right, the path is blocked by the remains of a wall. To my left stretches a hall. The floor is matte black, worn by years of footsteps from when the building was still alive. The ceiling is black too, though not by design.
White doors with black frames line the white walls, side by side, extending forward. As I begin walking down the hall, I feel a breeze. I feel watched like prey and paradoxically, guided.
The breeze carries care and electricity. It feels heavy, larger than reality, not contained by it. It moves through the fabric of what is: from the ground to the objects, through me, through everything. Through its movement, dancing like wind in waves of water, almost imperceptible visually and overwhelmingly obvious to my other senses, striking in key areas—I understand that I must choose a door. Any door I touch will become mine.
I must choose carefully.
I try to imitate the way it speaks to me by stopping in the center of the hall to look around. I'm waiting to see which door draws me in, whether any of them feel different from this presence. It is important that it be different from the presence.
Another breeze reaches me, coming from the only open door, at the end of the hall to the left. The air from this one is light. Before touching it, before entering, I look around again for the presence. I want to observe its perception and I am afraid of flinching. Somehow, this whole ordeal has made me quiet, slow. I don’t know what that means, but I feel less in danger than when I arrived and I don't want to be perceived.
I enter the room and turn left.
I am in my bedroom from real life.
I sit on the bed and wake up.
Dream date: 2008
-
It was dark and the air smelled like something had been burning for a long time.
At first I couldn’t see anything, so I began moving slowly, feeling my way forward. The sound of my footsteps echoed back at me, hollow and distant. That was how I realized I was probably inside some vast underground space. I kept walking without knowing where I was going until I noticed a faint red light glowing from the ceiling.
There were no stairs leading to it, but the walls were uneven, marked by holes and irregularities in their structure. Using those, I managed to climb closer.
When I reached it, I pushed against what felt like a cap. Eventually, I rotated it and climbed out. It was marked with symbols shaped like eyes, each one different. Some looked human. Some did not.
I emerged into a destroyed city I had never seen before. I must have come up through a sewer.
Whatever had happened there was no longer unfolding in front of me; it had moved somewhere farther away. Still, I could hear it. People talking, screams, growls, the sound of things breaking. In the light, everything was red. In the darkness, everything was black.
The buildings around me were empty. As I looked around, I noticed that one nearby building offered easy access to a higher vantage point.
I went inside and climbed the stairs. Corpses were hidden in dark corners. What had once been an apartment within the building had become part of a rooftop. Fires still burned throughout the city. One flickered inside the building I had entered and I moved carefully around it so I wouldn’t burn myself.
When I reached the top, I could finally take in the full view.
The city was enormous, built mostly of black bricks. Later, in other dreams, it would appear again as The Black City.
As I stood there and analyzed the view, I felt something. A connection to that world.
It was a strange feeling. Up to that point, I hadn’t truly felt connected to anything. I acted instinctively in ways I believed would trigger feelings in me, but they rarely did. It was as if emotions were buttons you pressed to produce a response, not states that existed naturally and simply had to be felt.
The default was void, abyss, nothing.
So I kept pressing the buttons through imitation. Smiling did not make me feel good. Laughing did not come easily, though when it happened, it could be genuine. Fear was something I experienced indirectly, not as “this will hurt me,” but as “if I get hurt, I will have to hide so I don’t have to interact with anyone. Anyone at all.” Surprise and disgust I found myself imitating the most because people think you are weird if you are not grossed out by cleaning animal waste or stale food with your bare hands or not surprised when you receive a gift, even though you like it and appreciate it.
So in that context, standing before the uncanny view of the city, I wasn’t afraid.
I felt calm.
I had the distinct sense that I was meant to meet someone there. It was a feeling of waiting, of anticipation, as if something was about to happen.
But that is all I remember.
After this dream, no later than 2003, I moved in real life from the place where I had been born. Then there was a pause in my dreams, until 2008, when I had the Black-White Halls dream.
PS: Even though in this dream I felt calm, all the dreams I remember and write down, whether dreams or nightmares, have something in common: they tax me. I wake up more rested after the ones I do not consider nightmares, but I still feel that my resources have been used. I need about two hours to recalibrate after waking if I wake when I need to, not in the morning, in order to be able to sleep eight hours beforehand, work well after, concentrate properly and not break things around the house by mistake or bump into doors.
Dream date: No later than 2003.
-
I remember being woken from a deep sleep. I didn’t know why. There was no sound, no new light, no physiological need demanding attention.
Curious about why I was awake (and because I loved the night), I began to look around in the darkness. First toward the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sky. Then toward my pink nightlight.
That’s when I saw what the darkness had been hiding.
In the pink ray cast onto the wall by the light, there were bugs and worms crawling: on the walls, on the floor, along the edges of the window, on the ceiling…
Every fucking where!!!!!!
By the time I started to panic, realizing they were going to reach me, I felt them under the blanket. Then I saw them on top of it.
When I screamed, it was because they were under my skin. I could see them moving beneath it and feel every cell in my body twitching in pain.
When they reached my eyes and started going down my throat, I woke up for real this time, in the same room.
The only thing I’m unsure about, whether it existed in real life or not, was the door on the left.
But before waking into reality, I was completely convinced I wasn’t dreaming. Everything felt too real.
I was born in 1997. This is the second dream I remember ever having. Because of that, I can only place it within a vague time period, sometime between 1999 and 2003. After that, I moved out and entered a period of frequent relocation, which also fed my insomnia.
You could easily say that the anxiety caused by this dream, together with the RED–BLACK CITY one, started a loop: being anxious about what I would dream, therefore not falling asleep.
I partially agree. It did contribute later, exactly in that way.
But from 2003 to 2008, I would either sleep deeply and remember nothing or I simply wouldn’t be able to shut my mind down early enough to wake up for school or kindergarten.
I wasn’t anxious about what I might dream because, as far as I was consciously aware, I had only had two nightmares at that age.
When I could go to bed late, I slept like a rock.
When I had to close my eyes early, it felt like I’d been hit by a truck.Because of that, I’d rather attribute the start of my insomnia to the stress of frequent relocation; of both home and educational institutions. By age eleven, I had already been in four schools and three kindergartens. Those schedules felt deeply unnatural to me and it took me a while to realize it's not normal.
The strong dreams and nightmares reemerged after I moved into a place where I would live for ten years. Ever since then, they haven’t stopped. Even if I kept moving or not.
That’s also when I got locked into being anxious about what I was going to dream, added on top of an already growing mess.
No matter how much you embrace the unknown, if all you get are nightmares and insomnia, you eventually reach a point of exhaustion. Too exhausted to resist. To care. To fight.
Sleeping or not sleeping starts to feel like the choice between holding in vomit or letting it go out wherever it lands.
It’s not about curiosity anymore.
I’m not saying I didn’t dream at all before that. I know we dream every night. But some dreams, like this one, I will remember forever. Others I can’t recall, no matter how much I try.
Because of that, I suppose my mind communicates more important things through the dreams that persist, while the rest may simply be brain maintenance.
This is the first time I’ve clearly noticed the gap. I knew it existed since I’ve been keeping dream journals, but I hadn’t realized until now that these dreams began in the first house I ever lived in and continued only in the next place where I stayed long enough to grow roots again.
This time, though; because before 1999 my brain probably wasn’t developed enough for complex dreaming; I was older. I had a corner where my mind could expand. Once it did, it never stopped.
No matter society’s plans for me.
No matter my plans for me.PS: Since I couldn’t have been younger than three when I had this dream; no, it didn’t make me afraid of the dark. Sure, I was scared of what might lurk in it, but I’ve always had this thing: if you try to scare me, you only make me want to come after you and scare you more.
Be civil and you can be anything. I don’t care.
Back then, I couldn’t articulate it like this, but it manifested simply:
If you hurt me, I hurt you.
If you care for me, I care for you.Dream date: No later than 2003.