Nightmare

I woke up to a nightmare this morning. I have had this same nightmare in various forms over the past few years. Three aspects are more or less the same - I am either travelling in airplanes or I am the pilot, the pilot loses control, and the ariplane crashes into the sea.

This morning, I woke to the sound of my cell phone receiving a text message. I heard the usual beep beep, and I turned to my cell phone on the side table next to me. I noted the time, but I was too sleepy to read the message. I went back to sleep, and that was when I had the nightmare.

I dreamt that me and my oldest girl friends from school were travelling together in an airplane. There must have been about six of us in all. We were all excited because we were going to some destination for a holiday. The plane was preparing for its descent. My best friend was seated next to me, and we were chatting about this and that. At some point, we noticed that the airplane was headed in the wrong direction. It was no longer lowering the altitude, and seemed to move away from the airport where we were supposed to land. I can remember passing bridges, roads, and all. The pilot comes on and says something about having difficulty with the landing gear. The pilot's voice indicated that she was a female. Somehow I had a realization that she was an Indian, eventhough she did not have an Indian accent.

I remember turning to my best friend and making a comment about female pilots and how un-reassuring they were. We joked - making comparisons between female drivers and female pilots. But we decided that our female pilot was competent, so we had nothing to worry about. In my heart, I felt differently. For some time, the airplane went here and there, and did not seem to have a destination in mind. I was getting worried at each passing minute, but my friends were not.

Then, all of a sudden, I realized that we were over the sea. The pilot came on again, and told us all calmly that she was going to do a landing in the sea, which of course, made no sense to me, even in my dream. A crash landing into the sea meant death by drowning. The flight attendants showed us in a rushed manner where to find a life vest, and disappeared. The plane thundered to the sea at an alarming speed. The pilot began speaking again. She said to pray to God, and she said the Al-Fatiha. I realized with an irony that the pilot was a Muslim. I prayed along with her and asked God for mercy because I knew that I would be dying soon. One friend got up from her seat, and threw open the emergency exit, and jumped out into the sea.

Then the plane crashed into the sea, and we were instanly surrounded by water. I recall removing my seat belt, and thinking about the open exit door, wondering if I could head towards it and escape the sinking plane.

That's when I woke up. My rational mind must have taken over because I recall telling myself that there was no point to continue planning an escape when I would have drowned by then.

I checked my cell phone for the time. My dream had lasted around 45 minutes.

Curious to find out what this all meant, I did a quick search on the Internet. This is what one site suggested:

"To dream that a plane crashes, suggests that you have set overly high and unrealistic goals for yourself. Your goals may be too high and are impossible to realize. You are in danger of having it come crashing down. Alternatively, your lack of confidence, self-defeating attitude and self-doubt toward the goals you have set for yourself is represented by the crashing airplane; you do not believe in your ability to attain those goals. Loss of power and uncertainty in achieving your goals are also signified. " From Dream Moods.

I just find it uncanny that the pilot had to be a female, Indian and a Muslim. I don't think I have had that variation of the airplane crash dream before.