Wednesday 8 April 2009

Dreams of cars and snow and crashes


I had a dream last night.
It was more like a nightmare.

No monsters, no demons, just enough discomfort to make me twist and turn till the anxiety finally sprung my eyelids open at 2 a.m in the morning.

I had a dream about driving, I had a friend in the car, someone I hadn't seen for a while, and someone who had caused some discomfort in recent months.
I was driving my car, going somewhere I'm not sure where. And I was speeding slightly, the feeling was that I had to get where I wanted to go.

I'm winding on mountain roads, and there's snow, and for some reason this surprises me, and I attempt to slow down. But it's too late, the car is swerving and twisting left to right to left, and I have no control whatsoever. I can tell there's not enough momentum to gravely harm me or my friend, but the car becomes a priority, and I'm worried about hitting it badly.

By the time I get the car under control, it's only a few minutes before once again the car is beyond any command. And the feeling was horrible.

I see the edge of the road, and it looks like I'm headed there, a cliff that overlooks a deep deep ravine, and the only option I have is to crash into a parked car.

And I do. I get out of the car, look at the damage, it's been destroyed from the left side. My friend gets out of the car inspects the car, and begins to talk to onlookers who have come to check on us.

It's snowing, and cold, and I realise my car is missing wheels.Three in total. This takes over my thoughts, and I begin to look at the road we had come from, skid marks in the snow, wet dirty slush christening the slight uphill, and someone shouts that one of the wheels is further down. I run down, my breath fogging up and drifting into my eyes, cold wind pinching my cheeks.

I see one wheel on the side of the road, and its dismantled into two parts. I may not be a mechanic, but I know wheels don't do that. The inner balloon tube is a weird flower shape, and as I look on, I find another one of the inner tubes off the road, dangling from a tree coming out from the side of the mountain.

What exactly possesses me to reach for it, I'm not sure, but the next thing I know, I'm kneeling on the snow on a cliff side, the cold damp seeping through my jeans, reaching out for it.

I can hear my breath, and the warm blood pulsing through my neck as I stretch and stretch and I feel feeble and weak and I begin to lose balance. The anxiety of being in a car crash is adding up, images of my car side crumpled, the fear as I attempted to keep it all together, the helplessness. I'm upset, and distressed, and I wake up.

My phone is blinking blue, I check and find a message, reply in a groggy daze that I just had a nightmare, and turn over to my other side, thankful that my car is parked at the end of the road, thankful that it's not snowing, and thankful that I woke up before I felt any worse.

I read that among other things, dreaming about car accidents is a sign that one feels they are not in control of their lives, or a situation, whether the situation has or will happen.

Why are my dreams telling me what I already know?
A rude awakening at 2 a.m. doesn't make things any clearer, just more disturbing, with a twist in the stomach and slight fear as a cherry on top of a rotten dessert.

I guess I'll be more careful driving my car these next few days. And I'll check my wheels too.

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