Published October 8, 2024

Yesterday was a lost day. I slept until close to an early-afternoon meeting, then slept another eight hours or so after that. A nightmare that just kept going and going was hard to shake after I woke up. It might steal today from me.

I needed a car. My mom went into a building — a bank or a car dealership, I don’t know — and came out with a deal for a car at a good price. It was a big car, but … unusual.

When I went to drive it, I discovered that I had to pedal it, like a bicycle. From a seat in front of the car, exposed and vulnerable. Outside. As in, the hood ornament was behind me.

Lost and confused, I became disoriented and afraid. A man came along and showed me that the pedals were optional. He removed and stowed them, then helped me into the car.

The interior was spacious, almost like in an RV. It didn’t seem possible from the outside.

As the car moved forward (by whose driving, I can’t say), I noticed that we couldn’t see the outside world through the windshield. Instead, we were looking at a screen with animation, with colorful images obscuring the view of the road. Only by seeing how close we were coming to hitting road signs to our right could we know to turn the wheel to the left to veer away from possible nasty collisions.

But we still couldn’t see straight ahead.

The challenges just kept coming

Somehow I figured out you could roll up the screen and tuck it away. Okay, good. But I realized I was not in the driver’s seat, but behind it. I had to find a way to go to it while the car was moving. This is not an uncommon theme in my dreams.

There was another problem: My phone was nowhere to be found. I knew that my mom had moved to a different house on a street where she used to live, but she had never told me the address. Could I find it? I had my doubts.

The obstacles just kept coming. Grateful for his help, I let the man off where he needed to be. At that point I realized I didn’t know anyone I could trust.

Since a dramatic change in my work schedule in August, my sleep and health have taken a beating. I slept for another eight hours after a midday meeting that followed eight previous hours of sleep.

I am up past midnight once again. After so many years of late-night work, that might never change.

The imperfection of the telling

One big problem with recalling a dream and putting it in narrative form is that it’s flawed from the start. Every word choice is an attempt to recapture the reality of that dream world, and every word choice is loaded with meaning that the waking world is suggesting.

I could rephrase every sentence above and still have that problem. It’s like trying to explain blue to someone who has never smelled it. Like trying to tell you about a country meadow when you haven’t swallowed one whole.

Like remembering how oxygen changed colors and not having the vocabulary or context for that.

Perhaps the worst part is that the nightmares, which are so real — so real — are seemingly lasting forever now. They rob me of so much of my so-little-time-left, and not just the sleeping hours meant for rest and rejuvenation. The bad dreams linger. They spill over into the next day, and sometimes the next.

When the distrust I have of people in the waking world is joined by the person I become after not knowing who to trust in the dream world, we are a frightened and immobilized Carly.

Image of girl having a nightmare by Yuganov Konstantin via Shutterstock.