Somnolent Spotlight: The Earliest Dreams I Can Remember

I had a conversation in the waking world with some of my friends recently about dreams we used to have in our early childhood. This, of course, brought a few of mine to the surface of my memory. I recalled some of the earliest dreams I can remember for everyone and to which one of them responded "oh, I don't like that. I'm an adult and I don't like that". So I thought I would document those dreams in long format to make everyone uneasy! 

Now, I must put a disclaimer here: a necessary evil of remembering something is that the environment in which you remember it will influence the recollection ever so slightly, and a lifetime of minute changes can amount to significance so I'm not sure for how long these dreams recurred, or even if they recurred at all. They could have been one offs, but they remain vivid, vivid memories and have indeed stood up to years of recalling, so here we go!

The Waves

The first I'll write about, and of which I am certain was a recurring dream brought on by real-life events, was a dream where I was in open water in a storm-ravaged sea at night, being tossed around on enormous waves without a boat, a float, or even a bit of flotsam to hold onto, it was just me and the open ocean. In those dreams I would try to call for help, but I either had no voice to call with or I couldn't be heard over the sound of the tremendous churning of water. There was no narrative to this dream, I was simply trapped in the ocean. I would regularly have this dream if, that day, I went to a particular swimming pool the next town over. 

Now before you think (if you haven't already) "My God, what an awful dream to have over and over again!", it didn't put me off going in the water at all! I loved going swimming as a child, I've been SCUBA diving since I was twelve and I have two degrees in Marine Biology, so as traumatising a dream as it may sound to you, a reader, I assure you that, to me, it was just a dream and I was unaffected by it, if anything it stoked my interest in the ocean; I wanted to overcome those waves!

The Goblins in the Moonlight and the Voice that Banished Them 

The next dream(s) I can recall from an early age link together over a period of time --or at least I think they do. 

The first was hyper realistic, and I have recalled it for so long I'm no longer certain where reality became dream. The vision started when my father put me to bed each night, he would leave my bedroom and my awareness would shift to the upstairs landing. There is a window on our landing and through this window would stream down thick rays of moonlight. Within this light, small glimmers would pass through the window and travel slowly down. Once these descending specks of light reached the floor, they became tiny goblin-like creatures that scurried and skittered and tried to get into my bedroom. I'm quite sure that I would ask my father to "smash the goblins" in the waking world because the dream was so vivid, but don't hold him to that! When I did, he would appear in the vision standing in front of my room with a mighty sledgehammer and would crush the goblins if they so much as dared to approach my door.  

These visions of moonlight-riding goblins invaders happened for quite a long time until one night I heard a voice in my dreams. The voice told me that it had the power to get rid of the goblins forever, but in return I would have the dreams that the voice decided to show me. I agreed because I was afraid of the goblins and never wanted to see them again. I was too young to be sceptical of a voice making a deal like that. 

For the next [indeterminate period of time] I had the same recurring dreams which consisted of still, grainy, monochrome images of nothing in particular that would flicker like old, worn-out film in a slideshow that repeated until I woke up. I never had another dream about the goblins again though! I also don't remember hearing the voice after that. 

Interestingly enough the gritty, dreary slideshow dreams ended the night my father said the Lord's prayer with me one night before bed. So that was the end of that saga! Isn't that weird! 

But they're all just dreams right? I'm quite interested in the memories of dreams, and the point at what they mix with memories from the waking world. "Did that really happen or was it a dream"? That sort of thing. I'm also interested in the idea of fake memories, or memories we might make up to pad around another memory we have. I've tried to keep padding to a minimum for this entry, but I'm certain that the process of writing them out again has altered my memory of them. 

As usual, here's a picture to capture peoples' eye in the thumbail, thanks for reading this far!

26th July 2020