I have vivid and unusual dreams, when I remember them. Often, they play out like movies. If dreams can tell us anything about ourselves, then this dream journal should tell a lot about me! (Let's hope it doesn't just say I'm a crazy lady.)

Thursday 13 August 2009

Shark Attacks

I had a horrible nightmare last night.

Robert, Gabby, Bella, Connor, Cameron and I were all at the beach. The beach was a bit crowded that day. The kids were wading in the water, just barely getting their feet wet, and I was sitting further up the beach watching them with Cameron beside me in his stroller. Robert decided to swim out a ways in the ocean.

Cameron fussed a bit and I turned to tend to him, but when I looked back up, I noticed Gabby, who can’t swim yet, getting deeper into the water trying to follow Robert. I was immediately worried and got up to go and stop her. It was then I noticed a very large, shark fin about ten yards away from where she was but parallel to her. The shark came up almost all the way on the beach, and the people on that side of the beach started panicking and running from the water.

I started towards Gabby again and it was then that I noticed shark fins in lots of places out in the water, and most of them were coming in quite far to the beach. There was one really close to Gabby. I hurried out and waded into the water, pulling her up. I told her there were sharks in the water and she had to come back onto the beach. All of the way back out of the water, my eyes scanned the beach for Connor because I had thought he was with Gabby.

Back on the beach, I started screaming, “Connor!” and looking everywhere. Gabby went over to where Cameron was and stayed with him. My eyes scanned the beach frantically and I felt the fear swell up inside me. It was then that I realized that I hadn’t seen Isabella anywhere either. Then I woke up from the dream.

I felt so much relief that it had just been a dream, and yet I could still feel the worry and fear in me. I fell back asleep.

And went straight back into the dream.

I noticed a shark thrashing about (as though it had a hold of something) and it was not in very deep water. As I looked, I noticed that it had a young man (a teen, maybe?). I ran to help, wading into waist-high water and a couple of other men on the beach came to help too. It was actually two men caught by the shark, but the shark didn’t have a hold of either of them, they were tangled up with some sort of surfboard with a rope attached, and the shark had bit down on the rope. We pulled them up onto the beach and the shark was pulled up too. We cut them loose from the ropes and the shark remained stranded on the beach, thrashing about.

I immediately turned to looking for Connor and Bella again. The beach was really crowded with panicked onlookers, so I tried to tell myself that they were both fine and I would find them; I was just overlooking them because there were so many people there.

Robert, hearing me screaming for Connor and Bella, started to swim back to shore. For some reason, I was not worried about him; I knew the sharks would leave him alone. The fear that something might have happened to Connor and Isabella was still swelling up in me.

I could feel myself starting to wake up, but I didn’t want to wake up from the dream with the two of them still missing. It felt too awful.
Then I guided the dream a bit and found the two of them playing in the sand higher up on the beach (behind the crowds of onlookers). They were building sand castles (but not very well.)