Dream: Throughout the years, I've had multiple dreams within the same setting, best described as the Winchester Mystery House as reinterpreted by M.C. Escher - an endless labyrinth of staircases, passageways, and platforms, suspended over a bottomless, yawning void. It's impossible to distinguish up from down, or even left from right. It doesn't seem to follow the laws of geometry or physics. Additionally, there are giant flat-screen TVs floating everywhere.
Different dreams involve different parts of the mansion, but the overall impression is always the same. In every occurrence, there is a girl/woman in white, waiting there for me. I don't remember any of our conversations, but the gist is that this place is a timeless fantasy world that exists wherever I look expecting to find something hidden. The woman's age and role vary depending on my age. As a child, she is a playmate. A little later, she is a babysitter. During my teen years, she became a voluptuous woman. Whatever the form, a few details are always the same. She wears the same, plain white dress, and has long, straight blonde hair. In the dreams, she always seems the prettiest thing I've ever seen. She exudes an aura of comfort, understanding, and love, and seems to wait, endlessly, in her dimension for me to find her again. Each time I go, the longer I stay, and she tells me (really, we communicate through telepathic sensations, rather than words) that I can stay with her forever if I want, and that doing so entails following her through a doorway to the unknown. She almost seems pleading, desperate to get me to come with her.
In one dream, I enter the path to her realm through the filter at my aunt's pool, and ascend a staircase to find the woman. While I'm between worlds, my relatives enter as well and look for me to bring me back. I don't want to go back, and she finds me and comforts me while I cry into her chest. The adults cannot enter, finding only a dead end. Again, she urges me to follow her, that she will never grow tired of me and can be whatever I need.
In the final dream, she is gone. I ascend a staircase to find her when a different female voice calls to me. 'Don’t go. It's dangerous. She's not what she seems.' Suddenly scared, I follow the voice out of the mansion. The TVS literally roar to life behind me in palpable rage. Before I pass through the exit, I catch a last glimpse of her behind me. She seems paler and smaller. She's reaching out to me, and her eyes are heartbroken. That is the last one in the series that I remember.
Significant Life Events: Varied. This is a reoccurring dream I've experienced roughly between the ages of 6 and 14.
I feel disconnected from the person I was. I have my childhood self's memories, but no sense of actually having been that person. I feel emotionally numb, like an empty shell wearing a mask. I don't know how to deal with the fleeting nature of time, watching what I thought were constants slowly slip away. It ultimately feels like I only exist as an actual being in my subconscious. I also have a strained relationship with my parents and with people in general. I'm an observer of life, rather than a participant.
Background: I am 20 years old, male, white, and employed with a carpet cleaning business.
Mental Illness Or Depression: I have OCD and a history of depression
Location: USA, California, Vacaville
Feelings About People: I don't have much of a relationship with my relatives. Some of them liked me as a kid, but we grew apart when I developed my own personality and realized they didn't care about me beyond being a little kid.
Relationship Status: Single
When And How Often: Throughout my life, between ages 6-14.