I only occasionally realize I'm dreaming, usually just before my death. But i can always wake myself up before my extremely painful death. I just close my eyes, count to three and open them fast and boom I'm awake and hungry.
Ok, can I tell you something?
That is a useful skill, because you know how they say you always wake up before you die in a dream?
You sometimes don't.
And when that happens, it is
not frelling fun.
In the actual dream state, it doesn't really hurt all that much, but you can't move.
And it's not like you hit the ground and collapse, either. It's more like in a buggy video game where you kill someone, and instead of ragdolling properly, they go into this glitched T-pose stance. You should know what I'm talking about.
And it is not fun, because you're stuck in this position, unable to move a muscle at all, until you wake up.
And that's when the real horror hits.
For whatever unbelievably stupid reason, your body thinks that dream states are at least semi-real.
This is why some people can feel pain in dreams, some can taste, and so on.
When you die in a dream, and you lock up, your body does too.
When I woke up from a dream death, I couldn't move. All of my body was rendered immobile, like I was turned to stone, and I could only take very shallow breathes, I couldn't speak, but I could move my eyes.
This lasted for quite a long time, I can't say how long because I couldn't see a clock, and terrifying situations make time seems to slow, but it was miserable.
There was another dream I had where I got shot in the leg, and when I woke up, my leg cramped up worse than it ever had before.
Dreams are scary.