My eyes suddenly open. I glance around and slowly recognize where I am. The stress I've just experienced slowly begins to disappear as my mind begins to throw logic at me, convincing myself that what just happened in my head did not actually happen. My hair and clothes are slightly damp. I've just had a nightmare. The same nightmare I have had at least 3 or 4 times a year. Every year.
This is what I felt a few moments ago. I know I said I wouldn't talk about dreams but I'm going to make an exception because this is a recurring one. The dream and issue is personal so I'm going to use a basketball (I know, wtf eh?) analogy in its stead. The dream plays out like this:
I'm on the court playin' the game. I've got home-court advantage. The score is 68-70 for our opponents. There's only 4 seconds left in the game. I've got the ball between my hands and I'm just behind the 3-point line. I'm wide open. But I'm nervous. I've made this shot more times than I can count. But the pressure, the stress, it begins to overwhelm me. I know what I have to do. I take the shot. The ball floats up in the air. Everything slows down. I can feel the crowd hush and stand up, praying the shot is good. It looks good. From my point of view, the angle is perfect. The ball seems to stay afloat forever but it slowly begins to descend from it's perfect arc. As it approaches the rim, it looks like it's going to swish. *Boing* The ball bounces off the rim and flies away. Everything picks up speed again. The crowd goes silent. My head and heart drop as I fall to the floor, defeated. I've let everyone down. I've let myself down. I've failed. I wake up.
I open my eyes. My heart still racing, the stress still overwhelming me. My mind starts throwing reasoning and memories at me. "I did make the shot" it tells me. My memories clouded because of what I have just experienced and felt. As I calm down, I realize that I DID MAKE THE SHOT. I won the game. I didn't let everyone down. I didn't fail.
SO WHY THE FRAK DO I HAVE A REPEATED NIGHTMARE THAT I DID?
It's been so many years now since this incident occurred. Everything turned out great. It was a very stressful situation at the time but it turned out okay. Why am I constantly plagued with a feeling that it didn't?
I know why this dream occurred this time. I'm going to go to work today to tackle the asp.NET issue that came up earlier in the week. I've been disappointed in myself that my skills had not been high enough to fix it. I was going to rectify the issue by solving it today. I'd spent time trying to figure it out and I have my doubts that I'll be able to solve this.
ReplyDeleteThis is why this dream occurred this time. However, I've also had this dream come up for no apparent reason before.
I've googled recurring nightmares and it helps to write about it and talk about it. It should also happen less frequently over time. I hope it does. Usually I just dream about naked....Marge (Simpsons joke).
So did you make the shot or not? I'm confused
ReplyDeleteIn real life, I did make the shot. But I often dream that I didn't.
ReplyDelete