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| Photo by Karl Solano |
I've never been much of a runner. I hated it in P.E., and I'm still not all that fond of it now. Not even on a treadmill in an air-conditioned gym. It's not my bag at all.
Even with my serious distaste for running in my real life, I do a fair bit of it in my dreams.
I started having "running" dreams sometime in the third grade (at least ones that I could recall in some capacity). They were mild at first - nothing I could truly recall in any kind of detail other than knowing running was involved.
I feel like we've all had dreams like that before, but when we woke up, the memories and details start to fizzle away, and all you really remember is that you had a dream about... something.
I just woke up knowing I had dreamed, and that dream had to do with running, and that was it.
But that changed when I got older.
I think they started when I was in junior high. The dreams usually took place at night or just as the sun was setting, and I was either trying to catch up to someone or get away from them. I always found it difficult to start running as if I were wading through molasses or something, and no matter how hard I tried, it would feel like forever before I sped up. In these dreams, I'd push down on my knees with every stride, hoping that would aid my speed. It makes me think of a train starting away from a station. It takes a while, but eventually momentum is built up for travel at a steady pace - like a train pulling away from the station.
They started off in the neighborhood I lived in, and I was always alone. The street lights were on, and I was at a junction where I could go left, right, or forward.
I always went forward.
I remember the anxiety of trying to reach whoever I was trying to reach, or the fear of the person I was trying to escape. And when I was the one being chased, I was always too afraid to look behind me - partially to possibly losing speed, but mostly scared to see whoever was chasing me right behind me, closing in.
High school brought dreams of open fields. In these dreams, I was always running from people trying to grab me. I never saw them, but I could always feel them behind me. In these dreams, though, I ran like the wind. Like an aerial shot from a movie, I could see myself in a field of wheat or tall, dried, yellow grass that came up to my knees. I'd keep running, and eventually one of my feet would hit the ground for my next step, and I'd get some air. Then back to running... and then another step with more air... until I bounded higher and higher to the point where the wind carried me away from the bad people trying to get at me.
From that moment on, whenever I dreamed of running, it always ended with me flying. I loved these dreams.
My favorite "running-to-flying" dreams were usually in some fantasy setting. These dreams were always in a first-person point of view, as if I were the camera shooting the dream movie, and everything was from my perspective.
I would run from the bad guys, and when I was far enough away, I'd bound to the sky and begin to soar. I always flew with my arms outstretched, much like how birds coast the currents. I would evade blasts being shot from the ground, and the higher I flew, the more difficult I was to hit. Once in a while, I would dive to help someone evade the bad guys, only for a gust of wind to bring me back up into the sky when they were safe, and just before the bad guys could reach me.
I think in some of these dreams I had foes in the air flying like me that tried to catch me, but I was always more skilled than they were and managed to evade them.
I don't dream as much as I used to, but when I do, those "running-to-flying" moments do come up from time to time, and they always feel magical to me.
Later my lovelies.
Have Goodness!
Rae
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