I had the coma dream again last night and it toally freaked me out. To understand why you need the back-story: I was in an abusive relationship ages 16-20. It got so bad that the man I was involved with chased me down the street and banged my head repeatedly on the sidewalk. It left me with multiple fractures to my skull and minor brain damage. I recovered well enough, dusted myself off and went on with my life after. The coma dream is a dream I have had 5-6 times in the nearly 16 years since that assault. In the dream, instead of surviving the assault with only minor damage, I ended up almost dying and falling into a coma. He gets incarcerated and my daughter ends up either with my parents, his family, or in foster care (this aspect has varied from dream to dream). In last nights dream, he was arrested and sent to jail for 25 years. His family had my daughter and refused to give her to my parents, so my parents went to court to get custody of her. They got it but then something bad happened (I can’t remember what) and my daughter ended up in foster care.

One thing remains constant about this dream: the passage of time. I have had it at 1 year, 2 years, 9 years, 11 years, 13 years, and now 16 years since this assault, and each time when I ‘wake up’ from the coma within the dream that is exactly the amount of time the doctors tell me I was in a coma. Last night’s was the worst, it was extremely detailed and very long. For example the dream seemed to take a week…I slept, ate, went to the bathroom, talked to people, had physcial exams, all of that. It did not seem like a dream at all, it was very real to my senses. My daughter was the same age she is in real life, 18, and so she was free from foster care and on her own so she was able to come see me. It broke my heart, because in the dream she had been in foster care since she was 2, almost 3. She was like a smidgen of her real-life self, in the dream she was this shattered and defeated pitiful girl. I tried to tell her it was just a dream, in real life she had this amazing life and we had a happy family. She said all this time I’ve been suffering so much and so unhappy while you just slept in your fantasy world. Then she left and wouldn’t come back.

Also very traumatic for me, my sons (I have 2 sons ages 12 and 9) don’t exist in the coma dream, because I had them years after leaving this man. and my husband Mercury Man, although he exists in the coma dream we don’t know each other, of course. I tried to get the doctors to contact him but they wouldn’t, until finally this one resident doctor googled him. Mercury Man has a very common name so a million pages came up but none of them were him. So I told the resident to call his parents, I gave him their address and stuff. He was amazed that I knew it, but none of the doctors seemed in particular concerned how or why I knew this stuff about a supposed total stranger who I claimed to be married to in my coma life.

What also freaks me out: I called my sister who still lives in my hometown (Cincinnati) and told her about the dream and described the hospital and stuff I saw out the window, like the construction that was going on in the street. She verified this major construction was indeed actually happening! Now, how would I know that to include it in my dream?? I talk to my parents and sister frequently so it’s possible that one of them mentioned it and I have since consciously forgotten it…but I don’t know, I truly don’t remember them saying anything about it.

Anyway, I woke up all kinds of traumatized and immediately talked it over with Mercury Man. He is used to me having bizarre dreams and/or bizarre reactions to dreams and he is very patient about listening and talking them over with me. I asked him how was I to know which was the true reality: the coma dream or my life being awake? and he told me about one of the originators of daoism. This guy had a dream he was a butterfly that was so realistic, when he woke up he wondered if he was a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming he was a man. Mercury Man told me it was very common to have a recurring dream like this and not to let it freak me out. My coma dream was just a variation on the butterfly dream: When I woke up I wondered if I was a woman who dreamed she was in a coma or a woman in a coma who was dreaming she was awake.

This made me feel a little better, but being a science fiction writer and reader I of course want another explanation, like maybe it was a parallel universe or something; maybe I somehow switched places with the Mercury in that world. But then I googled daoism and have learned some very interesting things: Whereas Western religionists seek to place their trust in an unchanging and invisible stability that somehow transcends the fleeting experience of time, Taoists recognize and celebrate the profound and mysterious creativity within the very fabric of time and space itself. That’s from A Short History of Daoism. Fabric of time and space! That’s one of the top ten things I ponder on a regular basis. I’m going to turn the coma dream into a sci-fi story incorporating daoism.

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!

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