I find that once again I am re-learning how to live my life. Every couple of years I stop and re-teach myself how to live. Change my habits to what works best for me in becoming the best person I can be. It is like how your fashion sense changes every couple of years as well as your habits. Your habits will change with or without you and it is up to you to choose which ones to keep, let go of and begin. Every couple of years I take back my life.

Like every drastic change one must feel that something must be done before taking any steps in the right direction. I am reverting back into my childhood coping mechanisms, but with the control of an adult.

When I was younger I was a lucid dreamer. Lucid dreaming means that you are able to see yourself in a dream and know that you are dreaming; hence a major reason why I am obsessed with Freddy Krueger. But that is a story for another day. My dreams were never magical as much as they were surreal. In time I even came to have my own dream world. Every couple of years I have a dream in which I am in an imaginary town where I have a house and a small community. And although the years may pass that lucid home remains as I left it.

Last time I went back my lucid home was flooded and had some new furniture which I did not approve of. I remember that before that dream the house turned into a boat where the waters would rise constantly leading me to different islands depending on what I was going through. I’ve seen my late grandmother in one of those islands.The new furniture was explained by someone in my dream as being there due to the fact that I was not around for so long that they were forced to live without me. I have yet to truly know what that means. All that I know is that once the dreams were over I found myself at peace.

I know that I sound crazy, but I rather have fanatical dreams than be a person who lacks sanity living in the very real world.

My lucid dreams soon turned into sleep paralysis when I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to move or speak. During sleep paralysis one hallucinates into thinking that there is someone else in the room with you. Shakespeare called this the “old hag,” because you feel as if someone or something is sitting on your chest preventing you from breathing and moving. These episodes last a couple of terrifying seconds.

The first time I experienced sleep paralysis was right after I was having a lucid dream in which I was on a school bus. The school bus would be on the brink of falling off a cliff. I would get out and jump off the cliff and keep doing it over and over again. I was so great at lucid dreaming that I would be able to wake up before landing go back to sleep and jump off the cliff again. However I woke up with sleep paralysis that day and I have been unable to be that in control of my dreams ever since.

Lucid dreaming makes reality more meaningful. It quiets the mind. I have read that many Buddhist use lucid dreaming to reach nirvana.
I am on a quest to get to that quiet place I once had. I was always a reserved person. However I never once felt that I longed to speak unless I needed to. Once I broke out of my shell, however it has become difficult for me to go back to that quiet again.There is so much useless talk going on around me. I feel as if most of what I myself say is useless and I am unable to control it.

I will once again re-learn to live my life. I must be quiet now.