Falling Awake

When I dream, I usually feel trapped in my body. Like I am sitting in a giant mechanized suit that I am willing forward by pushing on my limbs. My walking will always be slow, my arms dead. Like trying to move through quicksand.

Other times when I dream, I dream that I can fly. It's a very realistic sensation, I would imagine if we could fly, it would feel much like it. Typically, a giant gust of wind will blow through, and I will step forward, lying down onto the gust, and be picked up like a kite. If you're driving in a fast car, and you stick your hand out the window so your fingers are in the direction of the car, tilted slightly up, then you know what this sensation feels like. You move forward, but feel like you are going backwards because of the wind blowing on you. In fact, if you closed your eyes, you would just feel like you are being blown backwards instead of gliding forwards.

Sometimes dreams where I am flying (or even just regular dreams), I feel like I am falling. I think this is pretty typical for a lot of people. I always, ALWAYS, fall face first. There was one point, when I was 17, where I can a recurring dream of falling. I could never remember what led up to it, but it would end up with me on the roof of a flat building, looking out into an abyss. In front of me are a line of logs, set up like dominoes, balancing on nothingness, just kind of hanging in the air. I jump from the rooftop to the first, trying to balance, but failing. So I jump to the next, and the next. But the logs topple faster than I can jump across them. This inevitably leads to me falling off.

As I fall, I feel that sensation in my stomach. The feeling of my insides slapping against the inside of my back, hugging my spine. I can feel the air rushing past my face, the fear of death. And of course before I hit anything, I always wake up, bolting up and wide awake in my bed.

It always takes a second for gravity to reorient itself. After all, I had just been face down falling, to face up in a bed.

And some rare times, when I wake from dreams of falling, my eyes are completely unfocused, blurred. I can't make out colors or shapes, just one large amorphous blob. When this happens, it feels like my head is in a fishbowl filled with water. Like I am still in a dream, and this is simply the current reality.