I've never put much stock by dreams, mine or others'. I guess that came in handy when I pretty much stopped having any.
I blame it all on that dreamcatcher. Not sure if it was handmade (it did look a bit too regular for that, though), but a beautiful piece, with a set of wind chimes hanging from it. I hung it at my balcony door and used to give the chimes a ring at least once a day. I'm picky with my chime sounds, and that set was more than nice. I thought I'd got a good bargain.
I didn't even realise for the longest time that I no longer dreamt of anything at all. I'm not very perceptive in the long run, unless I keep notes. I believe it was a few years later, probably after I had grown tired with the thing and got rid of it, that it dawned on me what had happened.
I had found a set of fabulous instructions on how to craft one's own dreamcatcher, and there it was mentioned that the centre of the web should be left open, like in the picture above, not closed with a bead, as is the case with most ready-made dreamcatchers. The lore behind the craft says that nightmares are supposed to get tangled in the web and stay trapped there until the morning light dissipates them, while good dreams find their way through the central opening to reach the sleeper. Blocking that opening can only stop the dreaming altogether. The tribal inventors of dreamcatchers would be appalled.
One way or another, my dream life dwindled away to nothing while the dreamcatcher was in place, and hasn't bounced back since. I'm not particularly sorry. I've always found the fact that dreams remain unfinished (because you can't remember it if you don't wake in its duration) frustrating. Remembering good dreams was also rare, while nightmares stayed with me much longer. Must be my natural glass-half-empty attitude. I wasn't sorry to see those go. Up until I got admitted to university, I'd be chased by Lovecraftian horrors, or falling endlessly, screaming my throat raw without any sound coming out, more nights than not. Enough was enough.
Mind you, I don't mean I don't have REM sleep or anything. I bet I do, or I'd have been a subject of medical study long ago. I just get only the utilitarian dreams, the ones I don't wake in the middle of. I've never had a significant-feeling dream in my life. The odd nightmare still slips in when the stress levels hit the red, but that's par for the course.
A superstition from my neck of the woods claims that when you dream of the dead, they want something from you. My father died unexpectedly when I was 17, before I acquired the dreamcatcher. To this day, I count the event as one of my most traumatic experiences. And yet, I've never dreamt of him, not in the shock of the first nights, not in the quieter grief that has accompanied me since. I take it that he's happy with me, wherever he is.
