Reality, What a Concept

I drove down to my local Starbucks a little while ago, only, when I got there, it was closed. It was 11:20, and they closed at 11:00. For some reason, I had thought it was earlier. But, more than being closed, the intersection it was at was completely dark and deserted. Not a single soul around. So I immediately made a U-turn and headed home. It was kind of scary.

On my way home, things seemed a little strange, and I took a right turn at a stop sign much faster than I normally would have (in fact, I didn't stop at all). I thought to myself, "This is very strange -- the deserted street, the weird driving -- almost like this isn't real. But I know that this is real, because here I am, driving up the street."

I continued this conversation with myself, and whoever might be out there, until finally I said, "If this isn't real, then let me be home right now!" And immediately I woke up.

OK, so it was a dream. And we've all had dreams like that, where we think it's reality, but it's not. But this was especially strange, because in the dream I actually confirmed that it was, indeed, "reality." But it was not.

A few weeks ago I had a dream where things were disjointed. I would be doing something, and then, all of a sudden, there would be this gap of time, and I couldn't remember what had happened in between the last thing I remembered and where I currently was. This happened like three or four times. Finally, after the last time, I asked a man standing next to me if he had caused me to lose consciousness. He said, "No. But you keep drifting into that other realm."

"That other realm." Indeed.

So I'm having more and more of these "dual-reality" dreams. A couple of months ago I woke up from an ultra-real dream to find out that it had only been a dream. Relieved to finally be back in "reality," I then woke up from that. "How bizarre," I thought. "I woke up from the dream, thinking I was back in reality; but that was just a dream, as well!"

But then, just as I was contemplating the bizarreness of having had a dream within a dream, I woke up again! The third level had been a dream, as well! But then, one more time yet again, I woke up from that level!

So three times in a row I woke up, thinking I was back in "reality," when I was, in fact, still dreaming.

So, we've all had dreams like that, where we wake up, thinking we're in reality when, in fact, we're still dreaming. But I've never had one four levels deep before. And the frequency with which these sorts of "which reality am I in?" things are happening is increasing.

So I wonder if I'm losing my mind. Could very well be. The good thing about it is that, even if I am losing my mind, I probably wouldn't know if I'm asleep or awake, so it probably wouldn't make much difference anyway.

Plus, I fully expect to wake up and recall a dream in which I wrote a blog post wondering if I was losing my mind. I'll be so relieved to be "back in reality" and have all of those concerns be false alarms that I'll write a blog post about how I had been writing this blog post....