BIG and STRONG
I am a really big fan of this band called Starr67. They are a local band, and I am fortunate enough to be friends with them. One of their songs that I think is my favorite is called “Pebble’s Throne.” A line in the song says, “watching pictures on the mental projector inside my brain.” This line resonated with me in a way that I can’t describe. The beauty of art truly is finding things that do make you feel understood or seen.
Many times I have watched the pictures on the mental projector inside my brain. It feels like, to me, that when dreaming, you are shown a series of images or you live through an endless cycle of scenes that attach at seams unseen. In my dreams, I have seen things that affected me deeply. My dreams are typically negative or neutral for the last few years. It seems like I rarely have one that has a light feeling. Dreams, for me, are very similar to music in that there is an innate feeling attached, and really without much being said, it feels light or dark. It is a difficult concept for me to articulate properly, but it always feels so obvious to me when I listen to music and when I have a dream. The feeling can be inoffensive or bland often as well, but when there is distinct taste, you always can tell right away the nature of the thing.
My dreams almost only have no feeling, or it’s a sort of dreadful taste that sometimes I carry with me for the day when I rise for an unknown amount of time. My dreams are sticky in the same way that, after you remove a sticker from something, you can always feel the glue even if you don’t see it anymore. When my mind brushes on the memories of the dream or recalls an image, I can feel the glue still. The impression it left on my mind remains. It is for this reason that, for some time, I was apprehensive to go to sleep on many occasions. For almost a four-month span about November to February 3 years ago, I had violent nightmares every night. Many times, the nightmares or dreams would start or end with sleep paralysis. I would lie awake, unable to move, with images flashing through my mind. No attempt I could make would shake me from the dream. Typically, I would have to wake all the way up and walk to the kitchen and drink water to remove myself fully from the thing.
My saving grace on most occasions was a scene from the movie Kill Bill. When she wakes up in the hospital and can’t move, she starts with just her toes and then eventually regains control of her whole body. This is exactly what I would do. I would try to wiggle my toes until I could move my leg and then sort of try to throw my whole body up at once. It is impossible to know how long I would lay there until I could wake up, but it could feel like minutes or hours depending on the night. If you have experienced sleep paralysis before, you know how horrifying it can be. The feeling of being unable to move alone is awful. Many of these events would give me painful migraines that would follow me throughout the day.
I think a big part of the reason for all this was how badly I was sleeping. I would snore loudly and couldn't breathe through my nose very well. Around February or maybe March, when the weather started to shift my sleep got a little better, the nightmares eased up. Then, the following October, I got my adenoids and tonsils removed. This helped tremendously. The doctor told me my airway was 40% bigger, and I have since stopped snoring entirely. This was a huge help for my health since the operation. I have gotten a cold maybe once or twice, and my sleep is much better. Regardless of this, my dreams remain typically strange and austere if they feel like anything at all.
This past year, I decided to endeavor to better understand my dreams and their meaning, if any at all. I wondered if God was trying to tell me something. I decided to begin with a dream journal. Many mornings, I awake with vivid memories of my dreams, and I am able to write a good amount. As many of you know, when you seek to remember your dreams over a period of time, you will typically begin to recall more and more, especially if you are keeping a dream journal. As I began to write my dreams down, I wondered at the images and people who would make appearances. I decided that, to better understand these things, I would do some research.
I started with Sigmund Freud's opinions on dreams and their meanings. I do think Freud is correct in some of his propositions about what our dreams mean. He believes it is a yearning of the unconscious in many ways. Our dreams will show us things that we are afraid to admit even to ourselves that we desire. They will show us things we deeply and unknowingly need in some neanderthalic passion. At the same time, though, he believes many of these desires are purely sexual and can be traced to a sexual experience or repression we have endured in our waking moments.
Carl Jung disagrees with him here, which is why I prefer Jung’s interpretation of dreams and their meanings. I think that Freud, frankly, is correct about a majority of human beings, but Jung seems to believe that we can have more to our desires than purely sex. I would like to think I am more of a Jungian man myself in that my desires and deepest passions reach beyond that of the natural man. I began to read Carl Jung’s book on dreams. He explains that all images and people in dreams have a meaning and come from somewhere in our minds. Our unconscious does not randomly assemble places and people to create a scene. It pulls people and places together that share common ideas in our minds.
For example, next time you dream, ask yourself where the dream took place. What memory or idea do you have associated with that location? What people and things were there? What do you have correlated with those people? As I began to do this, I was frightened by the sense I was able to make from seemingly random scenarios. As you start to realize why X situation happened in what place and the relation between the two, other things begin to make sense, and you gather, on a grander scale, the message projected from your unconscious mind. You will realize strange desires you do indeed hide from yourself.
My first and only realization I will share that I made was about my violent dreams. In these dreams or nightmares, I was often required to fight to defend someone or something dear to me. I would dream that a man tried to attack my lady. I would kill them in the most brutal fashion possible. I remember in one dream, I smashed a man’s head into the curb repeatedly until it was bloody pulp. I remember in my dream, I felt I had to do it to defend my lady, but I realized after I had done it, the man I had killed had only flirted with her. I was in the wrong.
Often, my dreams would take on a similar look. I felt compelled to fight to the bitter end over seemingly small infractions from another party. But in the beginning I felt very vindicated in my reasons for fighting. I began to realize that I was, in a way, obsessed with violence. As I reflected, I understood more. I recalled that, as a younger man, I loved to fight. I loved to fight because it made me feel strong. When I was 13-15, that was probably when I fought the most, which I think is normal. I loved it because it gave me a sense of realization. I was strong and could decide what would happen. I cannot explain it very well, but it instilled in me a confidence that remains unshaken to this day.
Time went by. I went on my mission and came home, and I had no reason to fight or get into any altercation for about five years. Then, our first year, we played Treefort. One night, at a show, we got into a bit of a scrap with a few fellows with whom we had a major disagreement. I remember a large man tried to sucker punch my brother while he was busy with another guy. I stopped him and slammed him against the wall. Pure brute strength coursed through my body. It is scary to decide to fight, but once the decision is made, there is nothing else.
I cannot explain to you the purest, most vile pleasure of seeing a grown man look you in the eyes and show you they are deeply afraid. It almost makes me gag. I remember, after I smashed his head into a wall, he begged me to let him go. He literally begged me to let him run away. It made me giddy; I laughed and screamed. I threw him towards the door and kicked him as he ran and yelled.
It was after this that my violent dreams began. I don’t think I realized until much later that there is a part of me that loves to fight and be violent. This may sound silly, but as a guy who stands at 6’6” and over 300 pounds, I have never had my ass beat. I think maybe it would do me some good, frankly. I think because of this, fights and other altercations my whole life always went well for me. And it is a good feeling to kick the shit out of someone smaller and weaker than you. If anyone tries to tell you that it doesn't feel good, they are lying. It feels awesome, and I do think it’s addicting.
After that day in Boise, I felt like I thought about fighting and violence more and more. I forgot how awesome it is to feel strong and to feel real. Honestly, since then, I have only had one other situation, and it ended similarly and quickly. I think because my experiences have been what they are, and frankly not many, I have an augmented understanding of violence and fighting. I think since I haven’t had to fight much and I always win, there is a part of me that really likes it. I feel like it was hard for me to admit it to myself, but I think my dreams represented this strange desire to become violent again or seek out a situation where it is valid for me to hurt someone.
It was hard for me to admit, even now, what I did—that it is enticing to prey on the weak. I think that my dreams showed me things I wanted but did not want to admit that I wanted, as Freud says. At least, that makes the most sense to me. It makes a lot of sense when I reflect on those dreams because, in them, I would always win the fights in a super violent way, and I was always super vindicated when it started. It took me a long time to admit to myself that there has always been a part of me that likes to hurt people.
I think some of these desires for violence are from our natural man—the dog inside us. It is just like being horny or hungry or angry. As I reflected on that, I decided to make a goal to be more kind and try to avoid conflict if I can. I think, for a time, conflict was sort of enticing to me for the aforementioned reasons. There are valid reasons to fight and be violent, but I think, for me, I just liked the feeling of being strong and knowing that I could make people afraid or something like that. That is the most animal form of power there is, and it is addicting like all other forms of power.
I think God made me big and strong so that I would protect people, and so I try to think about that a lot.