I cannot remember my dreams.

After living with my roommate Zoe last year, I realized that I never truly experience dreams because I never get to think about them after I wake up. I almost never remember any details; my mind seems to leave me as soon as my head hits the pillow. Zoe seemed to have a dream every night that she would describe to me the next morning, all fully formed dreams and memorable conversations. Only on occasion do I remember bits and pieces of a dream; maybe once every few months do I actually remember a full dream.

I started to make a list of dreams I do remember. I try to jot down details as soon as I can, and I began this summer. So far, I have seven listed, and only one is a fully fleshed, well-detailed dream. The other ones are just random details that I kind of remember, all of which make no sense. My dreams have never seemed significant like Zoe’s. They cannot be analyzed because they are just a bunch of scrawny, blurry, disjointed details.

I tried to look up why I can never remember my dreams because it is simply difficult to wrap my mind around the dreams I am losing. It does not make sense to me that I am dreaming every night, yet the dreams that only I have access to are gone forever. Most articles I looked at contribute the loss of dreams to heavy sleep patterns. Through different studies, scientists have noticed that those with more brain activity and sensitivity while they sleep remember their dreams more often, almost every day while the heavy sleepers rarely remember dreams. This observation makes sense; Zoe woke up to every alarm I set as a light sleeper, and during stressful weeks, the people living in the dorm next to us would hear my alarm before I would. I’m basically sleeping through my dreams, which does not make sense to me. One would think that the heavy sleepers would have the more intense, memorable dreams than the people who wake up often during the night and do not fully commit to sleep.

However, every article I read ends with some inconclusive conclusion that scientists can observe whatever they want but still do not fully know why some people do not remember dreams. I can only hope to begin to recount more details and write them down before I lose them completely. I just like to think I am living wonderfully in the dreams I never remember, and now I just have the access to create and control my own dreams.

Therefore, like the dream studies I have read about, I will end with a little conclusion. I just would like to describe my struggle with dreams, explore the ideas I am just sleeping through, and hope to remember more soon.