Dreaming: Good or Bad?

I have a good friend who lies down and goes to sleep every night as soon as the head hits the pillow.  This friend has very strict rules about not watching TV in bed, not reading in bed, not working on the laptop in bed.  For the most part, the bed is for sleep.  “You must train your body and mind the bed is for sleeping!”  This is the constant lecture I receive.  Very sound advice because I work from my bed constantly.  I watch TV there, I read there, I write there, and I talk on the phone and Facebook there.  I also toss and turn every single night and dream extremely vivid dreams there.  My friend….never dreams or doesn’t remember them if they do.

I wake up in the morning absolutely exhausted from the dreams I have dreamed.  They are so vivid and so real.  Several doctors have advised me over the years that it is a symptom of the mental disorder.  When I worked in a restaurant, I cooked all night in my sleep.  When I worked in a retail jewelry store, I sold watches all night in my sleep.  When I traveled as a marketing director, I flew on an airplane every night in my sleep.  My mind never stopped and never rested.  It has been this way my entire life, and bordering on forty years old, it has almost worn this body and mind out.

Over the years I have been prescribed sleep aids such as Ambien, etc.  The problem is that with Bipolar Disorder, it has an adverse effect and you sit straight up in the bed about two hours after you fall asleep, wide awake.  It is a result of the chemical imbalance.

For me, dreaming has not always been detrimental.  My dreams are so vivid and creative that I have used them to write, develop marketing campaigns, and even visit with relatives who have passed away.  I often see my dreams as a gift from God because it’s my way of communicating with my beloved grandmothers and my Dad since they passed away.  I can remember very detailed conversations when I wake up in the morning and questions answered that helped me to bring closure to the death of a loved one.

Back on June 25 when my older brother Tony passed away from his car accident, I was devastated.  I lost sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking of him and I couldn’t manage my grief.  I didn’t see him in my sleep, I just tossed and turned because I felt guilty that it happened to him and I felt regret that I was not a better brother to him.  For over eleven weeks I have suffered thinking how will I ever find closure to his death when there was no proper opportunity to say goodbye.  He was taken from us abruptly.  Death was instant, and there was no open casket or no possible way for us to view his remains, or have the “traditional goodbye.”  I barely was able to compose a sentence through his entire eulogy.

I feel that I have spent most of this time in shock.  Not fully accepting the fact that he is gone and not coming back.  Concentrating more on regret and the “what if’s?”

Last weekend was Labor Day weekend.  A wonderful and loving group of friends took me to Fairhope, AL near Mobile Bay and Gulf Shores to rest and recuperate.  Saturday, September 3 would have been Tony’s forty-fifth birthday.  I was devastated and no matter how hard I tired, I couldn’t be the life of the party that I wanted to be.  In fact, I lay in bed until lunch time on Saturday, just dozing in and out of sleep, mostly too sad to muster the energy to socialize.  Finally, one of my friends came and kissed me on the cheek, woke me up and said we are all waiting for you.  I agreed to get up and shower and go out for lunch.  There was a triple red flag at the beach due to Tropical Storm Lee and the wind and waves were unbelievably intense.  I put on a little show for my friends to make them laugh by doing my own version of a weather report.  I gave a high energy performance, we even uploaded it to Youtube, but before long, sadness reclaimed control.

The day progressed and we had wonderful meals, great conversation and all the friends encouraged me to talk about Tony and share stories of our childhood, and so I did.  They sat and listened intently as I verbalized memories of laughter and love from years gone by.  I told of our varying interests as young boys, different styles as men in our twenties, and complete opposite career pursuits.  The one thing we did have in common was our respect for each other.  We never fought, and if there was a disagreement, we just didn’t discuss it because we never wanted to do anything to jeopardize our relationship. 

On Saturday night, September 3, the day that I should have been celebrating Tony’s birth, I drifted to sleep and for the very first time in the eleven weeks since his tragic accident I dreamed of him.   I dreamed I was riding In that old blue Supra, just as plain as day he cruised around the square in Jacksonville past the McDonald’s and all along the campus.  In my dream, he was dressed in a suit.  The one picked out to bury him in.  He looked handsome and healthy.  I kept telling him over and over, “Tony you are dead, you are gone.”  He just kept smiling at me and saying, “I know.”  I rolled the window down and let the air hit my face as tears streamed down.  I kept turning back to look at him to see when he was going to be gone.  Finally, he said, to me, “I am always going to be here, in your dreams.”

When I awoke on Sunday morning, my pillow was soaked in the tears I had cried.  I have complained for years of the dreams I had to endure.  The recurring nightmares and the endless dreams of work that caused me to wake up so exhausted in the mornings; however, at that moment, I realized, I couldn’t trade that dream for anything.  It was a step in the direction of closure.  By no means am I over it.  I don’t think I ever will be.  Still, I trust him and believe that when I desperately need the comfort, there he will be in my dreams. 

For those who believe there is no God, how do you explain the miracle of the mind?  The subconscious state of mind that satisfies the soul and mends the broken heart is undeniable.  God exists as the Almighty, All-Knowing, and All Powerful God.  He comes through for us in all forms and fashions.  I am learning to be thankful for some of the suffering I have had to endure in life, especially when it draws me nearer to Him and His hand can turn a handicap into a mechanism for healing.

I would say the title to this blog is about as rhetorical as one can get.  I’ll vote that dreaming is good, and oh how I pray that God never lets me stop.

Chase your dreams, for in those moments you may find the answers to the uncertainty of reality.