People are so... different.

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I was recently speaking about dreams.  I have written about them here, long ago, probably lost in the texts of Doom.  A few quaint, to me, notions.

Have you dreamed a whole lifetime?  I have.  I spoke of a time I dreamed my life to forty years of age, roughly.  I didn't remember every last moment, but I dreamed I lived them.  I remembered as much of that life as I remember this life, if this life has been longer... and I have memory problems.  Still, the idea is similar.

He thought that was... odd.  The look, on his face, more than anything he said.

I told him I have dreamed of flying.  I used to have nightmares of falling.  They terrorized my childhood.  Sometimes leading to me falling out of a bunkbed?  Or was I pulled out, by someone or some thing?  I never knew.  But I did end up on the floor many times.  Who knows what happens, in the dark, as a child.

I learned to dream to prevent that horror.  I didn't mention that I learned  to fly through steel, bending four to six inch plates in my way.  Not pridefully, accidentally, at first.  I still avoided steel plates when possible, but sometimes I had no choice.

I told him I learned to change my dreams.  To alter them.  I am aware I am dreaming, pretty much always.  I didn't tell him that last part.  I did tell him that I started learning to control my dreams in order to change a specific group of dreams.  I didn't tell him which ones, but it was the ones in which some of my people die in combat.  Since I was... never in combat(?)... I... didn't want to dream about that.  Those are the only dreams I can't, yet, change.  I have learned to see more, if I'm not sure the new material is original.  As for true?  I... just wish I could change them.  I can't even stop those dreams, or not quickly.  At least, now, I know I am dreaming when they happen.

I didn't tell him I have dreamed much longer lives, 70s, 80's, into the hundreds once.  I also didn't dare tell him that I wasn't always male.  In one, I lived to be an 80 plus year old great great grandmother.  I have to suggest my dreams are different.  With data stores abnormal to most, detail right to scent or feeling a breeze on my face, to... all sorts of things.  Sometimes I bring knowledge back from the dreams.  Knowledge I am pretty sure I didn't have before.  Odd how everyone knows a bit of something that others haven't sorted out.

I don't know if it is my dreams, or me, which are different.  I thought they were normal, until discussing them with people.  I have learned not to tell all.  People can't understand.  It is worse for them when they believe.  They try to understand, or figure it out.  I don't think it can be figured out.

Who knows.  Some say dream variances, or depths, can be from brain damage, or trauma.  But a whole life of them?  Damage which doesn't show up in scans and other testing?  I was thoroughly tested, psychologically and medically, before the V.A. would give me a diagnosis of ptsd.  They had to preclude it being a physical medical condition.  There is only one area they can't see well enough to know, the frontal area, I think?  But, from all testing and history, there really isn't a sign of physical damage.

Besides, that wouldn't explain the length of some of those dreams.

I don't dream whole lifetimes every month, probably once every five to seven years.  I have never sought to figure out who it might have been.  I just assumed they were powerful dreams, fictitious people.  Though who knows.  Haven't had one it a while, maybe they are finished?  Or... maybe I am dreaming one now?  I haven't, to my knowledge, dreamed one since I learned to be aware that I was dreaming.  Though I could see where that might fail in such a dream.

And the confusion, upon waking, back into my "real" life?  Something else.  Yea, I... write about it.  But writing isn't looking into the eyes and knowing the truth is being told.  Here, disbelief is not only possible, it is... expected.  Even if taken with a grain of salt, or even believed mostly, it can be dismissed at the first signs of discomfort.  But an eye to eye is different.

Then, to wake after such discussions, only to find a few posts dug up, and specifics in them.  I doubt if it was he who looked it up.  If it seems someone is listening at all times.  And, those someones, are curious sorts.  And long remembering.  Odd how the world is these days.  Some of you are just catching up, with tech, with what some of us have always been able to do.  Hear, listen, see, know, and more, and from some distance... in time and space.  *wink*  Hope you enjoyed the stories.

People are different?  Is everybody people?