All I Have to Do is Dream, Dream Dream Dream...

Every once in a while, my subconscious tries its damndest to drive me from half mad to completely insane.

            I’m not sure why, but every other month or so, I’m plagued almost nightly by nightmares, night terrors, and tragic, haunting, or eerie dreams. I have my theories as to why this occurs; maybe it has something to do with my heart condition; and I’ve tried every remedy under the sun, but nowadays I just kind of endure it, like a werewolf having to transform every full moon. You know, only way less awesome.

            Now, I say that I have “night terrors,” but I’ve never been diagnosed with the condition. According to sleepmates/unsuspecting sleepover victims, I do talk, sit up, stare, cry, scratch myself, and tear at my clothes. I do also have a sleepwalking problem, which I’ve mentioned previously. The symptoms are there, but when I talk about my night terrors, I don’t really mean the clinical definition. During these subconscious insanity binges, my dreams tend to fall into three categories:

            Nightmares: scary or horrifying dreams, like the ones normal people have every once in a great while.

            Hauntings: Bad name, I know, but it’s the best for this situation. These aren’t nightmares because there isn’t always a feeling of terror. They’re more like…horrible dreams that are so tragic, or hopeless, or eerie, that they haunt me for the rest of the day. I had one of those last night, which I’ll talk about later, I’m sure.

            Night terrors: These are what I deem night terrors, as opposed to the Mayo Clinic. For me, night terrors are ridiculously vivid nightmares where I am self aware (that is, I know I’m in a dream) and I absolutely cannot wake up. During a night terror I was having when I lived in the dorms, my roommate accidentally kicked her desk on her way out of bed and sent all its contents, including her books, laptop, etc, crashing to the floor. When she apologized about it later that day, I had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t wake up. I couldn’t.

            Naturally, the night terrors suck the worst. They’re usually one of three themes, one of which I won’t talk about. Often I’m being chased by something terror-inspiring, something that means my death, and I’m desperately trying and failing to hide or run, or I’m trapped and completely helpless and either being or waiting to be tortured and killed. All of my night terrors are about helplessness, fear, and being at the mercy of some external force. Freudians, take it away.

This is often how the night terrors feel. And yes, I fucking love The Cell. FANTASTIC movie.

            A good example of one of my night terrors is one that has stuck with me since high school. I was probably around 16 or 17, and I had an NT that I was strapped to a standing steel table and some stereotypical mad scientist with slimy black teeth was performing experiments on me. I can feel in all of my dreams sometimes, and I felt the cold steel on my back, but luckily I couldn’t feel the IVs in my arms. The scientist had injected some green substance into my veins, and I felt it in me, thicker than blood, and it began to ooze out of my gums. While I was trapped in this, something actually woke me up…I think. I sat up, I know I did, and I was in my room. But the scientist was there, in my room, smiling that black smile and shaking his head at me. Then I lay back into bed and was sucked right back into the night terror. I couldn’t wake up.

            I haven’t had an honest to deity NT in at least three months, thankfully. I’m hoping I won’t have one while I live with Swarley. It’s rare, but I do have occasions where I wake up screaming, and I don’t want that poor kid to deal with my nocturnal insanity. For this reason I also started tying a robe sash attached to the bed around my waist when I started sleepwalking in this house.

            Yes, I have a bed leash. Insert dog or BDSM jokes here!

            There was one day where I forgot I was wearing it…I tried to walk to the bathroom and ended up ricocheting back into my room with a comical cry. Swarles came out of his room, looked at me, and went, “Oh, good morning, Dee tied to the bed. This is perfectly normal.” and went back into his room.

            I’m such a freak. :)

            Anyway, these past couple of weeks I’ve been plagued more with nightmares and hauntings than terrors. I can handle nightmares just fine—I’ve been having them since I was at least 6. The hauntings drive me insane, though. I’ve actually had a recurring haunting, which is weird for me. I don’t often have recurring dreams, save the Freddy Krueger dreams I had in high school (long story.)

            This dream is almost always the same. I’m waist-deep in a very dark ocean, or sometimes it’s standing water, like a swamp without all the gunk. I’m holding the corpse of an infant in my arms, a beautiful dark-haired boy. My boy. I don’t say it, but I know his name is Cairo. And no, I have no idea why his name is Cairo. I’m not overly fond of Egypt (though the mythology is fascinating) or anything, but that’s his name. His eyes are huge, dark, half-lidded and glassy. His skin is grey-blue and he has purple tinged around his eyes and mouth. I’m crying my eyes out, putting my finger in his tiny hand and imagining him gripping it. I clutch him to my chest, watching my hair mingle with his. When I pull him away from me, he’s bigger, a child of maybe three or four with long, curling dark hair. He’s still dead, but as I slowly set him in the water, somehow his hand comes up and brushes my cheek. He sinks into the water and disappears even though it’s only waist-high.

            This particular haunting is horrible, because every time I have it I’m inconsolable the entire day. I feel like I’m literally in mourning. It’s just creepy.

            A couple nights ago, I had another haunting type dream that just won’t get out of my head. It sounds comical when I describe it, definitely, but there wasn’t anything funny about it while I was having it. In it, I was living on a farm, a single mother of a 5 year old boy (I think, not sure how old he was, but he was young.) For some reason, and this is where it sounds funny, Edward Norton had to travel back in time and kill my child and rape me to ensure his legacy.

            …yep.

Weirdest choice for a nocturnal antagonist ever.

            I’m not sure what his “legacy” was, but apparently my child was a threat and I was to give birth to something to do with it. It sounds so comical, but it was horrible. It didn’t just happen once…it happened over, and over, and over. It was like a purgatory sentence…both Edward Norton and I knew that this had to happen, and we had to keep reliving it, over and over again, even though neither of us wanted to. It was like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill to have it roll down again for all eternity. We were both trapped in this cycle, me having to watch my son die and be raped, him having to murder a child and rape a helpless woman. And we were both so aware of it, that this had happened before, will happen again, and won’t ever end. It was just…awful.

            And I can’t stop thinking about it! The damn thing is haunting my brain like I’m actually in some sort of purgatory!

            Well, I’m in the middle of one of these nightmare cycles, and it sucks, especially since Lent* just started and I’m on edge enough as it is. If any of my imaginary/invisible blog readers have any dreams they’d love to share, feel free! Also if you happen to have any remedy suggestions or even dream analyses, they’d be much appreciated. It’d be nice to go a while without dark circles under my eyes.

            Fuck you, Subconscious Dee.

PS-Weird, out of all of my dream descriptions, I put my recurring dream in the present tense. Hm….curiouser and curiouser…