This was the worst dream I have had in 2024 and likely one of the worst ones I have ever had in my life. It was extremely scary. Now I have always maintained that I enjoy dreaming even when it is a bit scary and this is true. I welcome the dreams when the come and find them entertaining even if they aren't about wonderful topics.
This dream last night didn't involve monsters or being chased by murderers or evil spirits or any of the things that we would normally associate with horror. No, this was something that in my mind is far worse than that. In the dream I was struck by an illness that made me blind.
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I read quite a lot and the books that i find haunt me the most are the ones that have a gradual dread that is heating up in them the whole way through. This is also true with movies that I watch. I find them the scariest. Well in this dream I didn't just snap my fingers and could no longer see anymore but my vision was deteriorating greatly one a day-by-day basis. One day it was just a little fuzzy, the next it was worse, then it got the point where everything was blurry, then things started to get blurry and dark, then it started to be like half of my vision was black, then it was like I was seeing through a peephole, then at the end, when it was finally near the end of the dream, i was completely blind and could see nothing at all.
In this dream I wasn't always in my own body. It was more like a movie where the camera was shifting around from being in my own vision (or lack thereof) or it was third person or even through the eyes of someone else that was in the dream watching me.
The thing about this that is so frightening to me is that vision is on of the things that I consider to be the most important in life and no offense to anyone out there that has someone in their lives that is blind, but I think I would want to be dead if I all of a sudden couldn't see things anymore. This is something I requested in my frustration to the other people in my dream once the vision was getting really bad. I told them to kill me.
The horror I felt in the dream is kind of like how I feel about being restrained. I think that one of the worst things that someone could do to me is put me in a situation where I couldn't move, especially if I was in the dark. In a way the gradual elimination of my vision was something evil that was creeping towards me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My friends and family were there with me and were supportive, but that was not enough. I don't think I could deal with not having the ability to see and once it happened in the dream - it was absolutely terrifying. It was like a prison that I didn't deserve to be in and couldn't possibly get out of.
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On another note I can't believe that anyone ever thought it was a good idea or a "calming" idea to put someone that was freaking out into a straight-jacket and this would sort them out somehow. Just the thought of it fills me with rage and panic.
So how did I end up dreaming about this? Well, I have some ideas. My vision is starting to get worse as I get older and this is just something that is really common with people. Before I went to bed last night I started playing a simple videogame that had a lot of text on it and I was really struggling to read it from the other side of the room where I sit across from my TV. I have also been talking to people here in Da Nang about where to go for eye exams and recently started investigating Lasik surgery.
However, I think that the main reason why this entered my psyche is because while shopping memes yesterday I stumbled upon an MRI of what your head looks like when you rub your eyes.
This is something I do frequently and to see it on an MRI kind of freaked me out because I never really thought about how much pressure you are actually putting on your eyes when you do this. It's creepy anyway, seeing MRI's but that was one of the last things I looked at last night before I went to bed so this is probably the culprit that lead to my odd and scary dream.
I went to the "experts" on the internets to see what sort of nonsense the psychologists came up with as far as dream interpretations is concerned and of course the usual suspects that they prescribe to almost anything was in there.
Fear of the unknown or lack of clarity: Blindness in dreams may symbolize a feeling of uncertainty or confusion in waking life.
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Fear of losing control or independence: Losing one’s sight can symbolize a fear of losing control or autonomy in waking life
These always annoy me when this explanation is put into a dream interpretation because it doesn't really seem to matter what you dream of, this is almost always one of the meanings that psychologists and professional dream-interpreters will attribute to your dream. It's the astrology of medicine. The only interesting one that I found was this one even though it is a very vague interpretation as well
Fear of being misled or deceived: In some cases, blindness can symbolize a fear of being misled or deceived by others, highlighting the importance of discernment and critical thinking.
To me, I was really happy to wake up and just be normal me with normal but probably in need of corrective lenses vision rather than someone who needs a stick to get around and has to re-learn how to live all of their life. I think that it would be much better to be born blind than to become blind because then you would have no idea what you are missing.
In a way this leads back to a conversation I was having a few days ago about being grateful for the things I have in life and I suppose that having the ability to see is really high up there on that list now! Have you dreamt about anything recently? Good or bad? Let's hear about it in the comments!