Nightmare

Over my lifetime I've never had a true nightmare as best as I can recollect. I've had a few dreams that I might classify as unpleasant, but my subconcious seems to spare me the anything truly horrifying.

Well, until last night anyhow.

I had two dreams. The first was fairly straightforward: I was living in a dark house with a few acquaintences. The only light throughout the entire dream was that of the television as my "roomates" played video games. I got to see a brief glimpse of what they were playing before I had to retreat to bed. I was sick, really sick, and I found out a few moments after getting into bed that some people had died of this illness and I had a good chance of dieing as well. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stave off death if it should choose me that night. Normally this wouldn't have been much of a problem. I don't truly comprehend the meaning of death when I dream. It's like getting a game over screen from a video game. But for some reason this time I knew what it meant to be dead, that everything would end permanently even if I didn't want it too. I recalled a friend of mine who is actually truly sick in the real world, she had died in my dream and I had the same thing. I wondered how she could stand knowing she was going to die. Ultimately I drifted off to sleep, and when I awoke I had recovered. Everything turned out in the end then I suppose, does this count as a nightmare? Doesn't matter I suppose, the next one did.

My second dream I was attending a game tournament several hours from my home with a few of my friends. I was terribly confused and kept screwing up basic things about the game (it's hard thinking logically in a dream, I'm amazed I managed as well as I did in retrospect). The guy I was playing in the first round against seemed a little bit aggravated but he was patient with me, and ultimately I beat him. Then I wandered off to speak with my friends a bit and wait until the pairings for the next round were displayed. The pairings came but my name wasn't on them. I went to talk to one of the people in charge and he told me "I have here you're traveling."

"What?" I asked him.

"You've been removed from the tournament, apparently you're too creepy. Get out, take a walk and see the town. We'll refund your entry fee later."

I was stunned, frustrated and very upset. I was the driver for my friends and I couldn't leave without them so I'd have to stay in town until they were done, and I'd been looking forward to this tournament all year. I'd also shelled out a lot of money for gas and a lot of time to drive there. This wasn't the nightmarish part for me though, it's when I started to cry uncontrollably in front of everyone. I kept trying to think logically, figure out a rational means by which I could fix this but all that came was emotion. I tried to talk to the guy who apparently had reported me as "creepy" in hopes that I could reason with him. I couldn't stop crying and I ended up yelling with frustration at him instead of reasoning. I couldn't control the tone of my voice. Needless to say it didn't work and he backed off even more creeped out than before. I tried to find the Tournament organizer but I couldn't. He was hiding from me. Meanwhile one of my friends that I'd driven up with was next to me trying to figure something I could do. He was calm and rational even as I was fighting back tears, and I couldn't stand that he'd be able to think like that while I couldn't. Again I tried to reason things out was a dejected admission that there was nothing I could do, followed rapidly by a complete flip flop as I was overcome with desperation instead of dejection now.

Then I woke up.

I've never lost control of my emotions in a dream. It's rare that I even have any that I need to be controlling. These dreams were both very strange for me.