Somewhere Else, There Is Another Me

These days, I’m barely sleeping enough that will last me the hours I need to call it a proper day. I sleep somewhere between 11:30pm and 12:30am, then get up between 2:30am and 5:30am. Tonight, I went to bed around 12:30am and woke up around 2:30am. However, I did get an epic lucid dream. When I do and when I wake up, the first couple of hours make me feel like I woke up to a foreign place. While I obviously know I am in my own home and I know where everything is, my brain feels like I don’t belong here, as if I ‘should go back home’ if that make any sense.

So my lucid dream is a mess after waking up, in regards to when they happened and exactly what happened. However, I will try to remember the macro parts, because even now, an hour after I woke up, my brain is desperately trying to hold onto what felt like home. I feel like apologizing to ‘the other me’. I’m sorry I don’t have the power to ‘go home’. This is my home now and has been since I was born. I can’t figure out a way to return. Perhaps when I die one day, I might return home?

There was a series of commercials on the radio, on television, throughout the internet. It was narrated by ‘the nice boyfriend’ which is some dude whose Asian-ethnic girlfriend kept pranking him with various mishaps I watched on Facebook and Instagram recently outside of my dream. Throughout these commercials, which played from one to the next non-stop, the narrator would say something about the company’s services, then in the last segments of each ad, he would say out loud the contact name or number. It always went like this, [garbled words that sounded like warb warb warb behind a thick glass window] followed by, “You can call us at [garbled words] at L E E M A N.” Though he would spell out Leeman, I always saw it as Leemanism. So even though he read out a phone number, it was always something like ‘Email.Leemanism’, or “You can email us at [literal word for Email] dot L E E M A N” but I would still see it as Email.Leemanism as well as a number. It was weird. My brain works oddly in dreams. I can ‘see’ multiple things at the same time in the same place. They aren’t phasing in and out. They just exist at the same time, without overlapping each other. As if I am split between different dimensions and be able to function as if they are all within one dimension.

Anyway, every commercial was different. One was on top of a huge cliff peninsula with a road, and some shallow hills, overlooking an ocean. The camera would be focused on the nice boyfriend with the background blurred out. His upper body would be slightly turned away from the camera, but his head would be turned toward the camera and he would say stuff, ending with the contact info. In some commercials, he wasn’t even shown. It was just his voice and some scene.

Somehow, all of that morphed into a weird 1990’s music video like segment, where Albert, Jenny, and a bunch of their new friends are all sitting and lying down in various locations on a station wagon. They’re all bopping their heads in some manner and smiling. It had a low sunset ambience. Jenny was wearing a white tank top, light blue jeans, and white sneakers. Albert was wearing a black t-shirt, with darker blue jeans, and white sneakers. Their friends were wearing various shirts, shorts, pants, and shoes. They all looked like they were having a good time. However, the commercial and the contact info was about them.

As I looked closer to the ads, I noticed my face was in all of them. I also noticed that Albert, Jenny, and their new friends were all around me, everyone smiling, everyone having a good time. The narrator’s message changed subtly, the closer I looked at the ads. He was now emphasizing “Leeman”. He would look hard at the camera and in a serious tone say, “Contact us now at [garbled words] at L E E M A N!” or “Call us now at [garbled words] at L E E M A N!” It took me quite a long time before I figured out that Albert and Jenny was telling me to get in touch with them. No one in my dream said it out loud, but it felt like everyone was trying to tell me, “It’s time.”

Before my dream switched to another thing, as the scenery, the people, the words transitioned, my heart sank for a moment. For a brief moment, I watched Ed walk through his basement door with his back turned to me, and Albert was in the other room saying something. For that brief moment, I was back at Ed’s place with Ed and Albert. Then the dream finished the transition.

I was older and more feminine. I also gained quite a lot more pounds and wore something that resembled a dress or a bathrobe. I had a DSLR camera hanging around my neck. I was wearing something bulky around my waist, like a rectangular camera bag. I walked around casually and half-comfortably, weary of where I am walking, since there were two metre wide concrete slabs for people to walk on, surrounded by shallow water. I was there with other photographers and videographers. There were about six of us, with tripod lights here and there. The dulled pastel blue sky was beautifully setting the unforeseen sun, with a few wisps of tangerine clouds lazily passing by. The air was cool, but warm at the same time. I hear people speaking in quiet voices in the near distance. I felt a bit out of place, but still in control.

My brother was there, my dad, my mom, some other people I knew were there too. My brother was a photographer. Patrick was also there. Cindy too. Amber appeared eventually. More and more people appeared. There was a scene and some set aids came. People were on them filming and stuff. I took a few shots here and there. I set the aperture of my camera making sure the target is focused and the background was blurred. I was still an amateur. Some of my shots were bad when zoomed in. Somehow, a lot of people were there suddenly and people were having a great time. People always made sure there was a lot of room around me to walk in and feel comfortable. They respected my space and never got in my way. I slowly walked around, making sure I wasn’t too much of a burden. No one ever gave me any bad attitude. They just naturally made way for me.

Beautiful women were all around me, handsome men with beards were there too. Famous actors were having a great time. Some woman that looked familiar as an actor, was on top of a ladder draped with a black cloth. An older man wearing glasses and holding a camera was right next to her, a couple of steps down. They were reminiscing on Lord of the Rings, where she played a male character. She looked over to me and shared that story with me, while touching my hand slightly, as if she has known me enough to be comfortable touching me. I felt warm and appreciated. I felt like people really respected me and appreciated that I was there, or appreciated for whatever I provided.

Somehow, the dream transitioned again. I was back at my old townhouse at Francisco Village, except the house was three times bigger and the surrounding areas looked more like individual houses than attached townhouses. I was at the garage area. I am not even going to try to explain what it looked like. I’ll just say it looks similar to what the townhouse garage looked like, but more exaggerated.

In this part of the dream, I somehow just knew that my dad wasn’t good towards my mom or towards the family. My mom was no where to be found. My brother was somewhere else in the house. I was alone where I was. It was almost dark all around me, like night time. There were lights all around that lit up areas like paths, a bench area, etc. The garage area had a garden right outside of it, that resembled a Japanese garden with a small pond and running water. There were orange lights that lit upwards onto a few concrete pillars. Suddenly, it was day time and my dad showed up in the garage. It resembled a bit like the previous scene with all of the actors. He was being odd in the sense he isn’t behaving like my dad would in real life. He was a bit of an asshole. He told me to get ready and tidy up. He told me that some hot young girls are coming over. My mom appeared and she had a tired expression, like she hadn’t gotten much sleep for years. She looked a bit like Amber in terms of weariness. My brother was next to me. He was the same age as in real life, except he resembled his younger self back in the early 1990’s when he wore simple clothes and had a simple outlook in life. My brother kind of looked to me for guidance. So I guided. I didn’t say anything and let him follow my lead.

A super dark purplish brown van showed up. The side door opened. A couple of Latina girls came out wearing super short jean shorts and tight crop tops. My dad smirked and ate a carrot, while he stared at them mentally drooling. I tried to avoid looking at them since I was too dignified to give into my lust. My brother was indifferent. My mom was tired and he asked openly, not directing it at anyone, “Will they be joining us for dinner?” My dad ignored her and ate another carrot. The girls stood there and leaned against the van or something else. They definitely looked hot and slutty.

The scene transitioned indoors. The house was huge. It was dark with a few lights here and there that barely lit anything up, but was oddly bright at their originating points. I heard the muffled laughter and talking of those girls in some room upstairs, with my dad. He’s most likely watching them and being strongly aroused. I was somewhat jealous, but mostly embarrassed. I stood there in that weird semi-darkness, in a huge house, with a broken family. We weren’t poor, but we might as well have been.

Some other stuff happened which I don’t remember anything about. Something about a foggy street in the early morning, and a ditch that ran for a long while, shrouded by fog and greenery. Something about a small ancient castle which I had to pass through where the ditch ran through. Something about just going somewhere, but with no particular purpose or goal. I had a cloak over me, with the hood over my head. I was on a small long boat, with a lantern hanging off one end. I was slowly being carried on the boat down the ditch which also resembled a thin quiet river.

For a very brief moment before I woke up, I suddenly went through all of those scenes in a jumbled mess and then I was suddenly aware of myself lying in bed. A moment later, I opened my eyes and stared at the lit screen on my phone. It read 2:34am. I checked Whatsapp, Instagram, then my SMS. I turned it off, looked over at Amber, then got out of bed.

Right now, it’s 4:17am. I feel a major point of sadness at the pit of my stomach. As I typed this dream journal out, my mind had swam through all those scenes again and again.

100% of all of my lucid dreams since I was a kid, behaved like my internal intuition telling me things that I normally cannot decipher when awake. I don’t know what to say right now, because I am not making an effort to understand what my dreams are trying to tell me. They aren’t always about what the dream is about. For example, my dream about Albert and Jenny telling to contact them, is most likely not about trying to contact Albert and Jenny. It might actually be about something else entirely. I don’t know right now and honestly, don’t care much about it.

If something happens within the next few months that coincide the intuition of my dream here, I will react accordingly, especially now that I have it recorded here.