sideways

i have several recurring dreams.

they vary in tone and intensity and the way i feel when i wake from them, and they pop up at random. so far, even though i have a pretty good idea of what each one means, i haven’t been able to figure out a pattern to their presence, or to identify specific triggers that might elicit their arrival in my sleep.

the one i have most often is a dream of tornados. the dream is always frenetic and with an underlying fearful, anxious energy... though i’m not entirely sure i’d call this dream a “nightmare.” i’m almost always inside my parents’ home in this dream, usually in the kitchen and looking out the rear window of the house towards the west as a storm approaches. inevitably, i’ll spot a funnel cloud on the horizon... and then another... and then another... and start to frantically shout at my family (whichever members happen to be in the dream) to get to the basement as fast as possible. sometimes they listen, but the dreams usually involve me struggling to get them to realize the meteorological threat that’s bearing down on the house and exactly how much danger we’re all in. i’m always panicked and frantic and screaming and, frequently, the dreams involve me trying to get my late grandmother – who’s always confused and lost – to follow us, but she doesn’t.

i also have a recurring dream about finding a long-lost friend from high school. it’s always the same friend, and she’s always still wearing our school uniform in the dreams (even though i recognize her as an adult). every single time, i actually run up to her and tell her that, for years, i’ve had recurring dreams about finding her, and we laugh about how this time it’s happening for real. only it never is. and i have no idea why my subconscious keeps searching for this particular friend – we were good friends in the first couple of years of high school but, by the time we graduated, we’d kind of drifted apart. i've actually tried googling her and checking to see if she exists on facebook in my waking life, but have always come up empty.

i’ve had the tornado and friend-finder dreams for a long, long time. but a new one has been added to my repertoire in the past couple of years: a dream of elevators that move sideways instead of up and down.

in this dream, i’m usually at some kind of giant, high-tech, elaborate office tower. sort of like something you’d see in a sci-fi movie about an evil corporation planning to take over the planet with its new line of killer mp3 players. the building almost always has an enormous atrium, and many, many floors. (a couple of times, though, i’ve found myself in an apartment building or other tall structure of some sort.) i’ll get on the elevator in the lobby or on the ground floor, usually with a few other people, and i’ll press the number of the floor i wish to reach.

then the elevator starts to zoom upwards at a breakneck speed that feels a thousand times too quick, but it never stops on the floor i’ve pressed. i start to panic, and i can feel the speed at which the elevator is traveling.

eventually, it stops (not on any floor) and then begins to plummet down just as quickly as it ascended. i can feel my stomach in my throat, and i’m terrified. again, the elevator doesn’t stop no matter what i try. by this point in the dream, the other people who got on the elevator with me have usually vanished and i am alone.

then the elevator stops again. but it doesn’t go up, and it doesn’t drop... it suddenly starts moving sideways. left to right, zooming super-fast, as though it were a bullet train following some kind of spiral railroad track looping around the interior of the building from floor to floor. the walls often turn to glass, so that i can see out as i travel past offices and people. but i’m stuck in there and they can’t seem to see me.

in the dream, i’m always shocked that the elevator is moving laterally, i’m always holding on for dear life, and i’m always thinking to myself (in the dream), “how is this happening??? how do i stop at my floor??? and how do i get off??”

like the other recurring dreams, there’s never really an ending to my lateral-elevator experience. the dream just kind of evaporates or switches to something else before i ever get to my destination, and it leaves me feeling unsettled and a little freaked out when i wake up.

i had that dream last night.