Dark Kent

Tonight I had a bizarre nightmare. I dreamt I was Superman.

It was not the scariest nightmare I've ever had as such, but the ending comes close, and the whole thing was really damn unpleasant. Why? Well, the flying, the superpowers, all of that was of course nice, but it was painful and frightening because, I realized, I think a lot like Clark Kent. And thinking like Clark Kent is pretty self-destructive.

So I was hanging around in a community in a forest, somewhere in Canada I think. I was there to do some reporting on a really old festival the locals celebrated. It was a kinda small job for star reporter Clark Kent, but whatever.

I don't remember the beginning of the dream, exactly - but I remember I stayed in town for a while, making friends and really starting to feel at home there. Real friendship, and it happening two to three times in a single day. It rocked. Then, a disaster of some kind struck on a mountain, and off I go, just in time to miss the festival itself and to disappear from a friend I had promised to help practising crossbow-shooting for some competition, and just bail out on some old people who had really wanted to meet me. Feeling really bad about letting everyone down, I fly off to the mountain and meet another superhero - a superheroine, rather; and promptly fall in love. This woman doesn't bother with secret identities, she just kinda saves people from afar, using various distance-based powers like controlling gravity. She's much more free and less worried than stuck-up Superman, who feels responsible for everyone, everything, all the time - and worse, she doesn't need the affirmation of peoples' thanks and admiration, in that empty, hollow way I do myself; as if a medal or a statue to my commemoration could somehow fill that empty hole inside. Nope, she just saves people if she happens to stumble across a problem, and lives a normal life - irresponsible, and without any need for affirmation from the media or the like. Nobody's even heard of her, it's just thanks to my super-senses that I discover her at all.

Not only do I fall in love with this woman on first sight, I also envy her. And the envy turns almost to hatred, because someone can be so free, so happy - someone born to the same responsibilities as me, but who can just carelessly ignore it and don't feel even a twinge of guilt. No longer needed at the mountain, I fly back to the community -

- to find that nobody wants to talk to me any longer, because everyone's all excited that Superman was seen over a nearby mountain, and that's so awesome. I go on with my day, crossbow-practising and all, thinking about this superheroine I've met. It distracts me so much that I don't even notice I've been careless, and a family in the town start suspecting I might be Superman. Strongly.

So they let loose a circus bear, hoping that I'll slip up and reveal my identity to them (this plot is probably straight out of the comic books, actually). So sure are they of this theory, that the mother in the family locks herself with me in a small flimsy trailer close to the bear, so that I'll have to make a mistake - I can't leave the trailer, because I'm supposed to be timid Clark Kent, who would never go outside to face a bear. Normally, Superman can deal with this. Just use one of your myriads of undetectable powers, or blow a curtain in the woman's face for a few seconds, or something - but I'm distracted, frustrated and frightened, so I just punch the bear in the face and kill it. The woman triumphantly goes "A-ha! You're Superman!"

...and it's this part of the dream I remember most vividly, because it was terrifying. In this dream, about Superman - and I know how utterly stupid and ridiculous this sounds - I went through a register of emotions so powerful that I have never experienced anything near it in real life. It was the guilt-and-self-loathing version of running and running and never getting anywhere, and waking up sweat-soaked and panicking. On the one hand, I don't want to hurt anyone. On the other hand, I'm really really angry and frustrated with the superheroine I met earlier in the day, who I both lust after and really hate (and, mind, I was still actually dating Lois Lane in this version of the dream, so there was guilt attached to that too). Also, I've realized just how much I need Clark Kent, because he's the only version of me that can actually make real friends, that can actually have functioning relationships of any kind. Superman is a god, and I don't want to be a god. And here is this woman who's basically threatening to kill Clark Kent.

So I hurt her. I hurt her bad. Holding back on most of my infinite strength, I manage not to kill her, but only barely. My dreams are normally not very graphic, but this one was. Snap. Crunch. You get the idea. And then, when I regain control of myself, I realize I can't. For all my anger, for all my despair, that's making me want to throw up, I can't bring myself to kill her. She's crippled, crying, reduced to a wreck of a human being, and it would really be the merciful thing to just end her life. But I can't.

This is the point where I woke up, flailing around, powerless against my own neurotic hangups. Power enough to smash moons to pieces, and I can't kill one woman to save my own sanity. It took me several minutes just to wind down, and remind myself that it was all just a dream. I hope it was all just a dream. If there's any dream I really don't want to be meaningful, it's this one.

(Also, please don't take it as such. If you take this dream to be deeply meaningful, it makes me seem utterly fucking nuts. I don't want you guys to think I am nuts. That would be unpleasant.)