otoh

Sometimes I become aware that I am dreaming. And it’s fun to try to manipulate the dream. Can I fly? Can I conjure something out of nothing? Sometimes. But sometimes my imagination pulls some wild vision out of nowhere that totally creeps me out.

I’ve had similar experiences with drugs. NOT what you’re probably thinking. When I had surgery on my arm, I remember passing in and out of consciousness as the anesthetic wore off. I had two vivid hallucinations that woke me with a start. Very bizarre. Then several years ago I had a cyst on my eyelid and the doctor removed it in his office with a local anesthetic. So I was sitting there while he was cutting into my eyelid — nothing like having sharp tools THAT close to your eye. And I was being pretty cool. (Really!) I was letting my mind wander and doing a pretty good job (if I say so myself) of ignoring this guy carving up my face. And then I heard him say to the nurse, “It’s deeper into the musculature than I thought.” And just that fast I had an image of this THING sending its tendrils into my head, roots spreading and twisting around the muscles in my face, spreading like crabgrass. I broke out in a sweat and he had to stop the surgery for a few minutes while I calmed back down.

Just within the last couple weeks though I had one of those dreams (and no drugs). It was very surreal and I don’t think I can adequately describe the image. I was looking at my fingers (in the dream) and it was as though my fingernails completely covered my fingertips, kind of like a thimble. And I began looking under the edge of the nail which was down by my first knuckle and noticed a row of tiny, black, hair-like… somethings. They were rigid, like the teeth on plastic comb. I ran my tongue across the area and it felt like the inside edge of my lower teeth (which, of course, is what I was probably feeling with my tongue at the time).

I looked under another nail and there were three (I mean threee) rows of those things. But these weren’t so rigid, more like beard stubble. And then — wait, let me interject here that I have no idea where these images came from. But I was vaguely aware that I was dreaming and everything was pretty benign. And then — they moved. Whatever those things were, they now appeared alive and reacting to my touch. And for some reason that so completely freaked me out that I woke up.

Even worse, for days afterward every time I started to drift off to sleep I saw them again. When the tip of my tongue rubbed across my teeth, I saw them again. And the idea of some creepy little something growing under my fingernails would freak me out all over again. Sometimes I don’t believe how weird I am.

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