In the very first dream that I can remember having, I was wandering in an unknown neighborhood located somewhere in the Philippines. The houses all looked the same -- wooden, run-down, lonely, and foreign. Everywhere I walked, there were only more of them, frightening me with their unfamiliar patterns, none of them looking like the houses I knew so well. I can remember feeling more and more anxious as I continued down the path, searching frantically for my mother and grandmother and knowing that I was only getting further and further away.

My mind fooled me in that moment; I thought it was real, and I woke up crying. I thought that it was my fault for wandering off to explore the world around me, and that my getting lost was my punishment.

The nightmare is common enough in children -- it's the fear of abandonment, and I had more than a healthy dose of it. For years afterward, if I lost track of my parents at the grocery store, I'd immediately panic. I'd hate myself for letting my attention wander, but deep down inside, I'd blame my parents, thinking that they were deliberately leaving me behind.

In the second dream that I remember having, I'm running tirelessly across the country for my life, the landscapes of my childhood memories rushing past -- villages, marketplaces, and even a vast Buddha temple in Japan. Chasing me is a giant of a man, whose face I can't even make out because his large feet are all I can see -- like mountains falling from the sky to crash upon the ground. And somehow, I manage to outrun him as he continues to chase me and ignores everyone else.

The men in my life at the time were all Filipinos -- small and brown, the typical "little brothers of America". And yet they seemed to tower over me like tall trees, authoritative and forbidding -- and very, very mean. I remember being locked in a closet for crying, and being the child that I was, I only cried more.

But as I got older, my tears were tougher to shed and my dreams were less grim. In them I acquired special powers -- magical, unique. I flew in my dreams -- really flew, like Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, quick and light and gloriously free. The ground was always a changing surface to me, rushing beneath me as grassblade blurs or slowly wheeling with the textures of mountain ranges and rivers. I would even save the world from evil countless times, pursuing fugitive sorcerers with the powers of my mind and obliterating them completely, for good. From these strange and wonderful dreams I took inspiration and wrote, lifting the landscapes of my life in slumber and applying them to the stories and sketches that flowed from my pen. It was as though I suddenly realized that I had control over my nighttime reality and could be anything I wanted to be, triumph over evil.

For many years I treasured my soul-healing dream life. Only rarely were they broken up by nightmares that had me sitting up and gasping or curling inward to cry. There was never any question though, during all that time, that these were dreams. I knew that despite the vibrancy of the colors and the strength of the various sounds and sensations upon my five "senses", my special world was a work of sleeping imagination. Despite the fact that every detail was vividly impressed in my mind -- from the wind against my face as I flew, to the realistic grip on my ankles as my pursuers tried to pull me back down to the earth -- I never mistook the moment as one in a wakeful state; I always knew that I was dreaming, and I always dreaded the time that my dream would end.

Until one night.

The special dreams had stopped occurring, and my physical world was in a state of turmoil. My life as a child was quietly coming to an end, and I had no guidance or direction. It was as though I'd been in a cacoon for a long, long time -- only to emerge unfinished. Unwhole.

I lay in my bed, looking out my open door into the brightly lit hallway -- not really thinking about anything, just watching the hallway and seeing someone descend on the stairway. My sister, I thought, as I watched the feet turn to legs turn to body turn to...

The thoughts raced through my mind. Was my sister carrying a fish bowl beside her head? All I could see was a round translucent object -- glass? I wasn't sure. But it was bigger than her head -- like a space helmet, maybe, or the bright halo of a ghost. The next thing I knew, the figure had walked into my room and was standing by my bed, and I'd found that I was paralyzed and panicked. It wasn't my sister, and when I looked, all I could see in the area of the face was a blurry blank of glowing gray. And could those two dark spots be eyes?

My mind had me kicking and kicking at it, with my feet aimed directly at the head -- but in reality, I never moved. I was frozen in the dream, only I couldn't tell that it was a dream. Was it real? Was I having an encounter -- be it with an alien or a ghost? I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell whether my paralysis was the paralysis of sleep or an alien abduction, and I never was so terrified in my entire life.

The spell finally seemed to break when I somehow managed to kick for real at the empty air, but the fear remained lodged in my throat, and I absolutely refused to sleep that night. I turned the light on and wrote in my journal, hoping it would serve as therapy and soothe my anxiety. The adult and rational part of me insisted that it was all a dream, but the irrational child just couldn't be sure and couldn't be calmed.

I guess the metaphorical monsters that I kept trying to vanquish still lurked in the darkest recesses of my mind, and whenever I was uncertain or scared, I'd find myself back in those early childhood dreams, fighting for my life and getting tangled in my bed sheets, dreaming that I was four years old again and being chased by some shadowy man with a knife.

It's a shame, really, that my dreams are always so morally black and white, so full of fairy tale monsters and magic. Only once or twice have I had an erotic dream, or a dream about an absolutely perfect and metaphysical love with an ideal young man and good friend. It's as though my own psyche is so full of soul-wrenching turmoil and lack of self-love that I'm incapable of having a healthy, loving relationship. Or a healthy, unremarkable dream.

Perhaps that is the case. Perhaps I am full of turmoil and in need of self-love. It's been a while now since I've analyzed my dreams. It's been a while since I've written them down -- and maybe I should start again, simply taking notes after waking so that I don't forget the many little details that always make a dream so much more interesting than life. It's a sound idea, a wonderful idea -- it's something I should be doing anyway to track my creativity and personal growth... a perfectly rich source of study for any psychologist looking to dissect a young woman's character, and a rich source for any fantasy and science fiction writer.

...Especially now that I'm able to fly again.