In my adulthood, I’ve had
two recurring nightmares. Freud likely would have had a field day with
me.
He believed that you
analyze dreams in order to understand aspects of personality as they relate to
pathology. He also believed that nothing you do occurs by chance; every
action and thought is motivated by your unconscious at some level.
In order to live in a civilized society, we have a tendency to
hold back our urges and repress our impulses. However, these
urges and impulses must be released in some way; they have a way of coming to
the surface in disguised forms.
One way these urges and
impulses are released is through your dreams. Or in my case, nightmares.
I don’t typically dream, or at least any that I remember. I pass
out at night, and am typically so exhausted I’m not sure I ever fully engage in
REM sleep. This isn’t good, and something I’ve been actively been working
on over the past several months. While I used to wear my 5-6 hours of
sleep at night as a badge of honor, I now wear it on my face. I look
tired, and it shows by mid-afternoon as I drag my butt through the office.
I feel like I’ve been supplementing my energy level through the
Wonderbra version of powering myself up means over the past several years. No
longer will I boost myself up with these false methods! I now try to
limit my coffee intake to a max of two cups a day and 5 Energy no longer sits
on my desk as a paperweight. I am trying to decrease the exhaustion through
healthy living and more sleep. Amazing how that works.
And perhaps because I have
been sleeping better over the last several months, I have noticed that two recurring
nightmares I’ve had for multiple decades are now gone.
The first started when I was in elementary
school. I was on a field trip to the JFK Museum, and a teacher had
brought a glass jug of apple cider as a treat. A boy in my class was
teasing me, and he pushed me…right into the glass bottle. My front tooth
chipped in half, exposing the nerve. It was painful. There was
blood. And because at the time I was a bit of a tomboy and the movie
Rocky was popular, bleeding out of my mouth was cooler than the pain I was in.
This happened on a Friday afternoon and the dentist’s office was closed
for the weekend upon our return to school.
I convinced my parents I
was fine, and could wait until Monday to be seen. They accepted that
until they realized I wouldn’t eat dinner. And then breakfast the next
morning. And what I perceived as medieval torture at the time, my father
wisely forced me to take a bite into an English muffin to prove I was in pain.
Those pesky little nooks and crannies gave me away. An emergency
trip to the dentist was in order, and my ordeal with dental care for the next
three decades has followed.
The
recurring nightmare that resulted is falling
on my face and knocking my tooth out. It didn’t happen often, but often
enough that each time I had it I was certain it was truly occurring. It would
never happen in the same manner. Sometimes I would fall down stairs,
sometimes I would trip on a railroad tie (that actually did happen,
resulting in several stiches in my lip as a kid), sometimes it was some other
random fall. No matter how it happened,
it always resulted in me waking up fearing I had a broken smile. And while the nightmare has been on hiatus
for awhile, anytime I fall, my hands will instinctively go to cover my mouth
rather than in front of me to block my fall.
While the first one is
easily understood from a childhood accident, the second one has far deeper
psychological reach. This recurring
nightmare has me sitting in Italian class in college, failing my final. Seems
simple, right?
I dissected this one for a
long time, because while I did take Italian for a semester in college, I
actually did pretty well in the class.
So why would this haunt me, in a recurring fashion, for so many years?
Ah yes…fear of failure. Okay, but I
realized more complex than that. It took
place in Italian class. Who at that point in my life was I most
concerned about perceiving me fail? My
father. Bam. Once I figured that out, it was a pretty
incredible realization.
My parents have pointed
out on numerous occasions that I don’t particularly care what anyone thinks of
me, let alone them. My mother’s favorite
word of the last decade to describe me has been “renegade.” And yet, I don’t know that that assessment is
all together accurate. I actually do
value people’s opinion of me – especially those people I love and respect. And as much as I have become my own
independent thinker and “do-er” as an adult, I don’t know that I’ve ever truly
outgrown wanting to make my parents proud.
The biggest difference
over the past decade or so has come with my own self-acceptance. I’ve learned that I will fail in life – a
lot. And that’s ok. It’s all part of that continuous learning
thing I love so much. And at this point
in my life, I’m not doing anything for my parents – or anyone’s – approval
anymore. Just mine. Even at work.
I’ve gotten to the place in my life where if I can look in the mirror at
the end of everyday and honestly say I’ve given it my best shot, I’m all
good. And if I haven’t, I course
correct. I wouldn’t call that a
renegade. I’d call that “how to find
happiness within yourself without relying on others praise or acceptance.” May not work for everyone, but it’s working
for me.
So maybe after all that,
it has nothing to do with getting a better night’s sleep. Maybe I’m just growing up and realizing I’m
really comfortable in my own skin. That,
and a realization that if I ever break my tooth again, I’ve got pretty good
dental coverage.
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