I woke up at 6 AM this morning quite unrefreshed so I decided to go back to sleep. As I slowly drifted off my thoughts and dreams became one. I had an extremely rare, (for me) if not brief, lucid dream.
I first realized I was in a dream state and not just thinking about things when there was a Smash Brothers style battle going on in a grocery store where I used to work. At first it was Game & Watch vs. Link; they fought in front of rows of carts, as a stage hazard the carts would back out into the field of battle and become obstructions. As the short battle went on G&W morphed into Young Link. At first he just started to make Young Link vocalizations (in the dream I consciously thought that was weird and that the game was glitching, my ability to really think was my first hint at lucidity), then the moves, then the body came. After the Young Link appeared I realized I was dreaming. I looked around, away from the battle. I was in my room and had been looking at my television, I wasn't actually a "real" spectator in the game. At this point I realized I was having a dream and aware of it at the same time.
I remember reading about lucid dreams and that they say if you look at your hands in a dream they will be doing something weird or will look strange. I looked at my hands to find that they were only palms. My fingers were missing. In the dream I groaned "Oh God" at the horror of it. But being aware that I was in a dream some what lessened the nightmarish quality of the discovery.
This is the strange part.
I looked back at the screen to find nothing but static. I thought to myself that I can do anything in this dream. Instead of thinking about it and going on an awesome flying adventure around the world/through space, I closed my eyes and thought really hard, "I can do ANYTHING I WANT."; expecting something miraculous to happen. Instead when I wrenched open my eyes I opened my real world eyes too. For about three seconds I stared with my eyes half open. In the lower half of my vision where my eyelid had departed I saw my real bedroom wall. On the upper half of my vision where the eyelid still covered my eye I still saw the glow of my dream television.
I would have closed my eyes and attempted to keep dreaming, which I think may have been possible, but I saw a rather large spider on my real world wall. I concentrated on the lower half of my vision to decide for sure if I was seeing this spider (it was dark in the room, the spider was the color of the wall). I decided I could and had a brief struggle to wake up. Eventually the dream let go and I was able to fully open my eyes. I quickly grabbed a notebook lying beside my bed and smashed the wall where the spider had been. When I pulled back the notebook no sign of the spider could be found. Whether it had been a figment of dream escaping into my real world vision or it had simply moved when I turned to get the notebook I do not know.
I got up, sat on the edge of my bed and mourned for the adventures I could have had in my lucid dream.
P.S.: The thing with me accidentally waking myself up was worse than it seems because wrenching my eyes closed, screaming in my mind, and then opening my eyes is a trick I've successfully used to wake myself from a dream countless times in my life. I should have known better :(
