Have you ever had a lucid dream? It’s when you dream and you know you’re dreaming. Sometimes you’re trapped in the dream and you think you’re awake. Other times you can control the dream and do whatever you want.
I used to have a lot of those dreams. I used to have what I once read psychologists call Restless Brain Syndrome, where I would dream before I had actually fallen asleep.
I would hear voices talking and mumbling in my head. The meaning of what they were saying was always just beyond my grasp. Sometimes the voices would have conversations with each other. Sometimes they would shout. Sometimes they would talk about me.
For several months I thought I was developing schizophrenia. Restless Brain Syndrome is a frightening condition for anyone who suddenly begins to experience it. It’s particularly frightening for a thirteen-year-old girl whose mother told her with high-pitched anxiety, “Perhaps you’re hearing voices from the road outside. You can’t be hearing them in your head.”
Then I read an article in a magazine about Prince’s pop star lady friend, Martika. When I read that article it explained that she, too, experienced Restless Brain Syndrome. Then I knew I wasn’t going insane. This is of course, a flawed assumption. Martika is really more than a little bit loopy. But I didn’t know much about Martika back then.
After that, I wasn’t afraid of the voices. I used to play with them instead. I used to try to control what they said, and what kind of voices I heard. They were very comforting. They had a swimming, womb-like quality. Sometimes they echoed. Sometimes they transformed into dreams. The sounds became images, and carried me to sleep.
I don’t hear the voices any more now. But sometimes I lie awake at night and think of them. I miss them.
