I do not know my name. I do not know who I am.
This document will serve as my record as I seek to understand my situation, and to escape this prison.
I shall begin, for my own benefit, listing what I do know. I know that I am trapped in what HP. Lovecraft called The Dreamlands. I know that I am a Psychonaut: an explorer of the human mind and the collective world of myth that Lovecraft miss-perceived as nothing more than the world of dreams. Lovecraft called this place the Dreamlands, Psychonauts call it the Shadowlands.
We all live with our minds in the Shadowlands. I know this. The human mind cannot handle reality, and so we all hide in the Shadowlands. But most of us float nearly unconscious in the shallows of this very deep ocean.
I am not in the shallows. I am trapped, by my own design I believe, in the depths of the Shadowlands. And if I am to survive with my mind intact, I must master myself and find a way to escape.
All this is easier said that done. My mind and my memory are patchwork affairs with conspicuous holes and misaligned sections. I understand the reason for this. This is the Shadowlands. Dive into a dream and world is formed from ones own mind, but the formation is rarely orderly and often nonsensical. My own mind is as much an enemy as it is an ally here. My mind is the landscape, the logic, the high and low, the good and bad.
I believe that I already possess, somewhere in my mind, the means to escape. I believe that I would not have entered the depths of the Shadowlands without a means of again rising to the shallows. But the dream logic of the Shadowlands has denied me that information. I am without the knowledge I need. The Shadowlands has taken the key and the door that will lead me to safety.
So this is my quest. Did I have a different quest planned when I dove into the depths? I genuinely don't know. If I did, the Shadowlands have stolen that knowledge as well. I shall keep my eyes and ears open for clues to that possibility as I travel. The Shadowlands operate on dream logic, and if I did come here with another purpose, the dream will reveal it if I survive long enough.
Oh yes, and I must remember that I can die here. I am not asleep. Or rather, I am probably not asleep. I am likely going through my daily routine, like a sleep walker. The interactions I undertake in the Shadowlands have counterparts up in the shallows and out in the unseen real world. And so, with my personal experience so divorced from the world my body inhabits, I could very well die and never know.
So I am trapped in a dream that has stolen my identity, my mission, and means of escape, and which could kill me without my ever knowing that I died.
No pressure.
