I had a dream last week that I was in a place very familiar, but something was obviously off. I should have written it down then, because I'm having trouble recalling specific details, but the important thing is that I had a strange feeling in the dream, like even though the world around me was familiar, there was something very much wrong with it, as if it just could not be. Now here's the crazy part. I started to grab someone, by the collar, and draw her to me, and squeeze her tight, to see if I was going out of my mind. And I could feel the shirt I was grabbing! I could feel sensations, like someone was really there! I thought that if I was dreaming and tried something like that, that I wouldn't be able to feel and that would be a sign that I was dreaming, but I could feel, and everything felt so real, even though in the back of my mind I knew something was wrong with the world and what was going on in it. How can this be? Can we feel things when we are dreaming? Was I maybe grabbing my own collar, my own body in my sleep? I don't know? I didn't wake up that way, but I'm not sure, because I didn't wake up right away (though I did soon afterward, because the nagging feeling that something was off wouldn't go away, and I kept wrestling with it until I became conscious and the dream fell away). Has anyone else ever had the distinct impression that you were able to feel physical sensation like that before, grasping with your hands, the texture of fabric, the weight of another body or object in your arms? It was very real, and disturbing because it made me so convinced that I was not dreaming, at least for a little while. I can't explain it.
