I suffer from nightmares a lot and have done for as long as I remember. Most of the time I wake, turn on the light, realise that the horrors are just in my head and roll over into slumber again. I don't have curtains on my window so when I wake in a sweat, the dawn is usually breaking outside and I am reminded that it was just a dream.
The majority of these nightmares are of the woo! scary monsters! variety; harmless, clichéd, common. Easily dismissed and soon forgotten. Some of the recurring ones are almost comforting in that their tricks are now old hat. The familiar dread becomes simply familiar and I know that eventually I'll wake up, it will be 5am on a Tuesday and my dog will not have been eaten by a viking. Probably. Sometimes I don't even remember them; I will wake up after a good night's sleep to face a concerned lover who woke in the wee small hours to hear me sobbing. They'll suggest psychoanalysis and I'll suggest that they fuck off and make me some tea.
But very occasionally I will have one that leaves me badly shook. One that my subconscious convinces me is possibly maybe plausible, if not exactly probable. Zebra-striped zombies are not going to break into my room and eat me. Probably. But human emotion and common-or-garden cruelty is just as terrifying, and my psyche likes to cover all the angles. There have been times when I have shied away from friends or family after a dream of casual abuse or careful violence. I can't tell them why I'm uneasy in their presence so I'm left muttering vagaries about bad dreams. Nothing good can come of the truth, nobody should have to hear that the bogeyman was wearing their face as his mask.
The worst of all are the ones where I am the cause of the upset, the instigator, the catalyst for whatever calamity unfolds. I had one a couple of years back where I found my grandfather dead in the bathtub. He'd slit his wrists and although I couldn't articulate it, the dreaming me knew it was because he was disappointed in me, because he thought I was fat. It goes without saying that Grandad was alive and well at the time, buoyant and full of both love and admiration for his eldest grandaughter. The memory of a nightmare like that still sickens me to the stomach; that I project my insecurites onto my nearest and dearest, that I have the gall to portray myself as a victim and then the stupidity to torment myself with the consequences.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. I need to learn how to splatter my bedbugs with a shoe.
The majority of these nightmares are of the woo! scary monsters! variety; harmless, clichéd, common. Easily dismissed and soon forgotten. Some of the recurring ones are almost comforting in that their tricks are now old hat. The familiar dread becomes simply familiar and I know that eventually I'll wake up, it will be 5am on a Tuesday and my dog will not have been eaten by a viking. Probably. Sometimes I don't even remember them; I will wake up after a good night's sleep to face a concerned lover who woke in the wee small hours to hear me sobbing. They'll suggest psychoanalysis and I'll suggest that they fuck off and make me some tea.
But very occasionally I will have one that leaves me badly shook. One that my subconscious convinces me is possibly maybe plausible, if not exactly probable. Zebra-striped zombies are not going to break into my room and eat me. Probably. But human emotion and common-or-garden cruelty is just as terrifying, and my psyche likes to cover all the angles. There have been times when I have shied away from friends or family after a dream of casual abuse or careful violence. I can't tell them why I'm uneasy in their presence so I'm left muttering vagaries about bad dreams. Nothing good can come of the truth, nobody should have to hear that the bogeyman was wearing their face as his mask.
The worst of all are the ones where I am the cause of the upset, the instigator, the catalyst for whatever calamity unfolds. I had one a couple of years back where I found my grandfather dead in the bathtub. He'd slit his wrists and although I couldn't articulate it, the dreaming me knew it was because he was disappointed in me, because he thought I was fat. It goes without saying that Grandad was alive and well at the time, buoyant and full of both love and admiration for his eldest grandaughter. The memory of a nightmare like that still sickens me to the stomach; that I project my insecurites onto my nearest and dearest, that I have the gall to portray myself as a victim and then the stupidity to torment myself with the consequences.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. I need to learn how to splatter my bedbugs with a shoe.
