I have a reoccurring one that I get a few times a year for the past 20ish years. I’m nervous about sharing it for fear that it may trigger the dream but I want to contribute.

It’s dusk and I’m around twelve years old standing with my parents on a large square stone structure that stands just higher than the trees in the massive forest that surrounds it. Imagine a medieval castle wall or the Great Wall of China if it were square.

The only other people there are a few skeletal “caretakers” wearing Asian rice hats that obscure their faces. They quietly sweep with big push brooms and keep to themselves.

In each corner of the structure is a 3x5ft hole with steps that lead down about 10ft ending at a black, lightless, drop-off.

I’m always standing on that last step before the void, looking up at my parents who are at the top impatiently waiting for me to jump. I tell them I’ve changed my mind and that I want to go home but they’re holding me to my word and won’t let me come back up. I usually wake up and that point and feel pretty depressed.

When I was around that age my dad walked in on me pulling the trigger on his.45 pistol I’d had against my head. I didn’t know to pull back the slide first to load it. He was, understandably, very mad. I feel this dream is related to that event somehow. I think I’ll probably continue to have it until he dies. I’m almost 40 years old it has to end sometime.

My favorite dream ever was one where I was in a choir and almost everyone important to me in my life was also a member. It was never specified what exactly was going to happen, but we all just understand that it was bad and that the only way to prevent it was for all of us to sing Come Sail Away by Styx from start to finish. As we get to the second verse it becomes evident that I’m the only one who knows the words, so I take the lead. We finish the song and everyone is very proud.

I’ve had a few dreams with a recurring theme where I’ll go on a vacation, and for some insane reason I bring all three of my cats, who proceed to lose their shit and run off, I end up in some kind of Benny Hill-like escapade trying desperately in vein to catch them, which is funny in retrospect and very stressful during.

In one of them we were on a cruise ship on the top deck and one of my cats jumped over the railing to escape, not knowing it was open air beyond, she definitely died. I basically screamed until I woke up.

I asked a woman out. She said no.

Even in my dreams I strike out.