The first time I dreamed about a trailer accident, but the subject of my dream made no difference to me. The fact that I had never even lived in a trailer made no difference. I must have remembered the few years when a good friend lived in a trailer, because the whole thing seemed very real to me. The details were amazing. Even now, they seem more real to me than reality seems.
The first part of the dream took place at home. Now don't laugh, but the house I lived in had been refurbished by a famous television show crew into a beautiful house full of stairs, much too genteel for me. Instead of marveling at all the added elegance, all I could wonder about was how in the world was I going to get up those stairs, as if I knew somehow that I would have trouble navigating steps. Friends came to visit the 'new' house, and worked their way into my dreams until a woman who visited often also came to the dream-me, visiting the trailer that only existed in my own head.
The trailer played a large part in those dreams or hallucinations I was having. Don and I were held hostage in that trailer, and it appeared to be the end of everything for us. Like all dreams, I don't know where the trailer came from, only that it was there, I was in it and held at gunpoint by four disillusioned kids, and it was sitting on a gravel road covered in ice, sliding straight towards the ditch and certain oblivion. Sounds hopeless, right? (No, it sounds like a Hollywood action/adventure movie, and I was playing the part of the helpless victim.)
The police caught the man who owned the trailer as he was trying to join with his fellow supremacist group members in some sort of revelry, and the kids went to a foster home while I suddenly appeared in a house that I had never been in before, unable to move while I watched as Don, the kindest man I knew, was hypnotized, strangled his mother, and furnished firearms to escaping group members. Later, I learned that all this wasn't true, but I spent a few very uncomfortable hours until I saw my mother-in-law, alive and well, and reading a newspaper like nothing had happened. As far as she knew, nothing had happened, and I was simply asleep. But it all seemed very real to me, and so, the dream wore on, getting more strange by the minute.
This is where the RV bus comes in. I don't know why, but, in my dream, Don had me moved to this bus for observation, since the campaigning politician who owned the bus was also a doctor. I knew of him, and had seen his advertisements on TV, but I had never met the man himself, and even got his name wrong when I tried to explain this part of the dream later to a friend. One thing led to another, and we almost escaped, but Don rather liked the life of a white supremacist group member and decided to stay. I remember my intense disappointment, followed by fear as we were almost apprehended. In the end, I got away to safety, only to find myself at the mercy of a deranged doctor, and the real fear set in. If I only knew of what terror was to come because of that insane doctor, I would have chosen to stay in the bus and faced whatever punishment came for trying to escape.
In the third and final stage of my dream, I was whisked off to an I.C.U. somewhere, which is comforting enough as long as a disguised doctor doesn't try to repeatedly kill you by shutting off your I.V. But that's what happened. The doctor was the last person I had seen at work the day before the stroke, and he has nothing to do with medicine - he's a computer maintenance person and had come to fix the computer in my office. That's all. But, in my dream world, he was a crazy doctor bent on my destruction, for some unknown and diabolical reason. Yet, since I could now name those who were involved, including him, the dream-me had to be killed; it was as simple as that. His capture and eventual discovery were traumatic, dramatic, and terrifying, and I don't want to experience anything that awful ever again, real or not. The only relief I could find in the whole affair was that it wasn't real. I'm still a little leery of that person, even though I know such a fear is ridiculous. But fear often is.
Group members came and went in my dreams, and I even thought I saw them in my first room at the Rehabilitation Center, but later I learned that nothing except the Center and the sensation that I couldn't move a muscle was real at the time. However, it was real to me, and it will take more time than I have given it to erase the dreams from my mind. Reality, I've learned, is different for everybody. I can only say that I'm glad to be beyond those awful times when the dream may have been only a nightmare, but that nightmare was the only reality I remember.
Next: Locked In