“I had the craziest dream last night!” We’ve all been there; a friend whips out this line, prefacing an hour-long rant about her shopping trip with Sienna Miller on Pluto before it was demoted from planethood. Although her fantasy has no basis in our own reality, we smile and nod and say, “No, really?” simply to allow our friend the satisfaction of reliving this magical experience.
I found myself in this situation the other day, as a girlfriend related her nocturnal adventures with Russell Crowe. In between smiles and nods, though, I felt more than just the usual boredom; I felt the painful absence of my dream life. I remember well that sated feeling of awakening after a pleasant dream, how it colored the rest of my day in rosy reverie. Of course, I also remember the quickened pulses and cold sweats of nightmare, but it had been years since I had felt either. As my girlfriend described in minute detail her ride with Russell across the Australian outback, I thought more about my dream life—why I’d lost it, why it was important, and how I could get it back.
Science tells us the mechanics of dreaming, how our minds and bodies progress through deep sleep into ninety minute REM cycles of activity. Though we are asleep, our brains, senses, and sexual organs come alive in REM. According to Patricia Garfield, PhD, a dream specialist, the images that appear to us in dreams are stimulated by the internal and external physical sensations we experience throughout the day. Dreams, therefore, awaken us to these sensations that we may have not fully appreciated during our active lives and allow us to process them within the safety of sleep.
What I was missing from my dream life was a richer active life. Without exercising my pleasure senses at night, they felt dull throughout the day. I craved even the most terrifying nightmare as an outlet for daily anxiety and to eclipse those quotidian qualms with the worst that my imagination could produce.
As a woman, dreams are particularly important to me. Greenfield emphasizes how many more life changes women go through than men, and how dreams are necessary to cope with the physical and emotional aspects of these changes. Through the three M’s—menarche, motherhood, and menopause—women are constantly facing new sensations that cannot be contained within a purely waking life.
