I’ve had a few recurring dreams before. One that’s happened very often was when I am unable to move, then try and cry for help and no sound comes out. Those are the worst. I’ve had one of those every couple of years since I was seven.
Today I am not talking about any of those, however.
I’ve had a recurring dream last year that really impacted me, and it wasn’t until recently that I understood the significance of it. I call it The Bear Dream.
I was a roommate with a bear.
I want to assume it was a brown grizzly bear, but I don’t know my bears very well. All that I know was that it was very large.
This bear was a horrible roommate. It did nothing to help keep the place clean, and I remember in the first dream that it went into the fridge and ate all of the food: my leftovers, ready-to-go meals, and just any simple ingredient it could find. Everything.
I couldn’t talk to this bear about it. It was a bear. If I didn’t allow the bear to consume everything I had, then it would eat me alive. I obviously didn’t want that, so I just went on and let the bear take everything I had.
The Bear Dream happened again a few months later in the fall, which is really odd for a recurring dream. I usually only have recurring dreams once every couple of years.
I was lying in bed in the “dream house” I had never actually been at during my awake life, and the bear walks up on its hind legs, and with its front paws it is holding a bazooka and starts to aim it at me.
I couldn’t move off this bed. I must have been half-awake or something. I also couldn’t cry out for help from anyone who was around, which is great because I had two recurring dreams in one.
All I could really do was open or close my eyes, so I chose to close them as the bear aimed the rocket launcher at me. Then I woke up.
I never experienced a double recurring dream before, or even a recurring dream that happened so close to the previous one. I haven’t had one since those two, though.
Back in December I decided to actively change something in my life. It was a big change, and I am still working through it/trying to not regret and be upset about it, so I won’t mention exactly what it is, but it’s currently the end of April and this would be the longest time I haven’t interacted with the bear.
The bear was real, and it was hurting me immensely. This bear either completely me and everything that I needed, or was a bear with a bazooka. There was barely any middle-ground in real life.
I couldn’t live with this bear anymore, which explains the bazooka, but this dream place feels a lot emptier after I removed the bear, and I don’t know what to do about it anymore.
The bear is definitely still around. If I’m going to continue using the dream house analogy, I’d say that I still see the bear sometimes through the window after cleaning it with some windex.
There’s a bear-sized space here with me now, which makes it feel much larger, and me feel more alone. That terrifies me, but I also realize that after the bear left, this place has gotten a lot cleaner, and I’m actually able to enjoy it, and myself.
I don’t know what will happen with the bear. It’ll probably make it on its own, because its a bear, and I’m stuck remembering a few times that “living with this bear” was actually enjoyable, but it’s just not possible for it to be around with me anymore.
I’m getting better, however. “My place” is clean and I am slowly getting used to not having the bear around the few times we were by each other. It’s a good thing, I think. It’s still very upsetting to me, but it’s still good, and it needed to be done.
There’s not much else I can say on this, so here’s a nicer, much funnier bear that I like that isn’t that dream bear:
Kristopher K. Online 