Speak to me in Dreams

I had a really weird experience the other day that I thought I'd share.

I'm currently working on an untitled comedy screenplay. In the beginning, a guy named Dave bails on his girlfriend Christine and her four-year-old son Joey on Christmas Day because everyone expects him to propose. Five years later, he meets up with his friend and they have the following conversation.

Dave's view matched my own. Christine goes a bit batty in the five years Dave's out of the picture, and I wanted to make some commentary on how unhealthy it is to dwell on past relationships.

Now, I stayed at my Grandmother's house over the weekend, and I swear the downstairs room is haunted. As usual, I ended up having a nightmare.

In this particular nightmare, my boyfriend and I were at a resort with some of his friends. One of them told me my boyfriend was cheating on me with a girl named "Phillipa," which turned out to be true. I totally flipped out and was a screaming, wailing, violent wreck. He ended up dumping me for her without a word. Several "months" went by before I spotted his car, and after I stalked him to the parking lot of some restaurant, I totally flipped my shit and started hitting him and screaming.

As crazy as it sounds, I think "Christine" was trying to tell me something.

Having such an emotionally draining dream was by no means fun, but I feel like I know where Christine's coming from now. My view—Dave's view—is too dismissive. Christine's descent into drugs and sourness could easy come from her depression following Dave's dumping her after five years. It wasn't that she hadn't moved on from Dave eventually—it was the emotional trauma that stuck around. Anyway, I feel that thanks to my character knocking some sense into me, my screenplay will be better and more relatable. She's more than a gone-bad ex girlfriend—she's a woman with real problems and emotions.

Fellow writers: has a character ever pulled these hijinks on you before? Did it creep you out?