Melatonin-Induced Nightmares.

I’ve always wanted to write a blog, a proper one. Not like tumblr where all I do is just reblog pictures and edits of things that I find cool, or livejournal. Should’ve started a long time ago and just wing it, I needed a healthy outlet to pour out whatever trash my head plays every night. Instead, I spent my early 20s trying to fight God. Drinking, plotting, and doing horrible things.

I still don’t know where I’m going with all this but I heard someone wise say the best time to start is always now, so here it goes.

I don’t know if this is a universal experience for everyone but every single time I took melatonin, I get nightmares. I’ve had plenty of unsettling dreams, odd ones that leaves you disoriented when you wake up (hopefully I get to write about those more in the future). But none of them compares to my melatonin-induced dreams.

This time, I dreamt my dog ran away.

I was going home from somewhere, walking through the entrance of train to with a childhood friend that I haven’t seen nor talked to in years. I kept walking and found myself in the middle of a street across a popular mall in the city.

In reality, there wasn’t any train station near that mall and the roads are filled with cars instead of people. How did I get there or why were people there, I haven’t got a clue. I gave up on dream logics long ago.

By this time, my long forgotten friend has made themselves scarce and I am left with my dog, a medium little mutt whom I love dearly. I didn’t stay long, the pandemic has thinned my enthusiasm of crowds.

The road home is where the nightmare happens. Day quickly turned into night, and my darling little dog managed to escape her leash. The road home quickly turned darker, and the more I tried to catch up to her, the farther she went until eventually I couldn’t hear her signature tippy toe taps.

I tried looking for her, but found a couple of joggers. They tried helping, even renting a helicopter of all things, but my dog still remain unfound. I was left with a pack of dogs that looked like the off-brand version of mine. Similar, yet not quite her.

Even while dreaming I can feel my stress levels rising. I can always tell when I’m dreaming, call it lucid or what not, and I can always just stop whenever I want to and jolt myself awake. I did this time, and when I opened my eyes in the ass crack of dawn I see my baby dog asleep in her crate. But whenever I took melatonin, I can never stay up for long, and when I fall back to sleep, whatever shit I dream continues.

I was in another place, at seemingly another time, but my dog stayed missing.

I found myself breaking inside a house with green-tiled walls and lace curtains. It had one of those Ghibli-looking kitchens, and the most notable in there was that the dark blue well pump that’s used as a water faucet. There was a tiny garden that had no grass, and there were dachshunds, a fuck ton of them.

It was like I jumped into a catalog of dachshunds. There was one that looked like a churro, one that looked like an eclair, and there was a fat one that really looked like a hotdog bun and that one peed on me.

One of the houseworkers found me with my shoes drenched in piss, told me to clean myself with the outdoor water faucet next to a very fat and very old dachshund.

As I cleaned myself, I remembered why I was there in the first place. I needed to find my dog who I know is being kept somewhere in this green dachshund hell. I kept snooping around, room after odd baroque rooms (yes, I googled), until I finally found the owner’s daughter’s room.

She opened the door, a little girl no more that 10, and thought I was her teacher. I knew I wasn’t, but I lied telling her yes.

Why did I lie? Why was she, aside from the houseworker, the only one there? Why were there dachshunds everywhere? I didn’t even like them. Why did I dream of a forgotten childhood friend albeit very briefly? What does it mean when a dog pissed on you in a dream?

I woke up to the sound of my dog whining for breakfast.

In the end, I never did find her in my dreams. I got up to heat her ridiculously expensive cooked rabbit with pork loins meal while I make cheap instant noodles for myself, she stares at me with her incredibly human eyes, her ears still lopsided. We do our little morning routine where she does tricks for food, I open the door so she can see the world outside.

I hug her while cursing that bottle of melatonin on my table, she licked my face before eating my hair.

She is here, I am here, our breakfast is here, and perhaps that’s all that really matters.

(I am still going to take some melatonin later.)