The Brain Comforts Itself (A trilogy of dreams)

After several traumatic incidents leaving me severely injured and profoundly alone, my subconscious provided me a place in which I could retreat. This place was not devoid of pain or danger. No, each time I visited I was made to overcome a challenge, face some aspect of my real pain, the difference from reality being that I had someone stronger and wiser than I was to walk with me. This phenomenon has been known by shamans all over the world perhaps before the written word itself. The ancients speak of spirit guides and tulpas, beings that visit our minds to provide us with unique guidance. 

This is an ability I’ve had my whole life, but I dismissed my fantasy worlds as childish or shameful. After my near-death experience followed by the most intense dreams of my life, I decided I didn’t want to keep these things locked away in my mind anymore, they don’t deserve to die with me. 

These characters might belong to a video game, but I don’t think that matters, these are the forms my subconscious assumed because these are figures who represent meaningful qualities to me. Snake, Miller, Ocelot, each in their turn taught me something important on my journey to recovery. 

This project took me down all sorts of surprising avenues of research, from the self-insert fantasies of Dante Aligheiri to the dissection of the subconscious by Jung. Our private relationship with our fantasies or even the fiction of others is significant, this triptych demonstrates the providence my own mind offered me as protection from my pain. 

The Dream:

The entrance collapsed from the impact of the rocket, leaving Snake and I in total darkness and choking on the dust. Turning our torches on we realised we had maybe a hundred metres of ground in front of us before the rest of the cave descended into water. Realising there was no other means of escape, Snake didn’t hesitate to enter the lake in search of any tunnels hidden beneath the surface. I sat alone on the bank, waiting for what felt like too long for someone to remain alive on one breath. Defying my anxieties, Snake resurfaced and informed me that there was a passageway leading outside. In the darkness I could see that where he was pointing it was ever so slightly brighter than the rest of the cave.

Entering the water, I had the air knocked out of my lungs, it was cold, colder than anything I had ever experienced, the pain subsiding only slightly, not due to adaptation, but numbness. Snake had shown none of the same discomfort, this either came from his own resolve or his sneaking suit offered greater insulation than my fatigues. 

He talked me through what I needed to do and how best to prepare for this passage. I wasn’t confident but I didn’t let it show. Snake went ahead of me and I was left following only the light of his torch, otherwise there was very little visibility as the silt had been disturbed by our presence. The tunnel wasn’t so narrow as to impede our movements, but enough to feel claustrophobic. I had made it only halfway through when I started to panic, my lungs began to burn, and however long it was going to take to reach the other side felt like an impossible distance at that moment, and Snake seemed to be moving too fast for me to keep up. Frantic, I struggled to turn myself around and resurface back where we had come from. 

Succeeding and able to breathe again, my lungs brought in air voraciously, excessively, I couldn’t stop, my mind ran through unlikely scenarios. What if there was something lurking in the dark waters beneath me? What if there was a finite amount of oxygen in here? What if there was no escape on the other side? I wanted desperately to get back onto dry land but I was too terrified to move, to do anything but tread water. It would be another minute before Snake realised I hadn’t followed him and returned to me. Had this been the real Big Boss, he might have just dragged me through the tunnel kicking and screaming, but Venom Snake took his time to calm me down. ‘There’s nothing through there you can’t handle. But we’ve got to hurry, your lips are turning blue.’

Having no choice, I dove down again, this time Snake was following behind, ensuring that I had no way out but forward. I tried grabbing onto the edges of the tunnel to propel myself faster, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to grab onto anything. My vision was vignetting just as I reached the surface on the other side. It was now I realised we were no closer to freedom than before, although the light of the moon shone down upon us, we were at the bottom of a natural well, almost sheer walls all the way around us. Snake sat me on the small ledge and I watched as he free climbed his way up the wall with ease, possessing a strength I will never know. Fastening a rope somewhere above, he then lowered himself down the steep edge again to help me to freedom as I heard the sound of Pequod approaching.