Dreaming My Dreams With You
January 22, 2007 | permalink

I have bad dreams.

I have them often, more often than it seems to me that most people do, and I've had them since I was a kid. I have them is fits and spurts and cycles; none for a few weeks and then every night (sometimes several in a night) for a few days or a week. When it's really bad, I will have them for a couple of weeks straight. They range from the unclear and unremembered, filling me with a vague unease when I wake and a jaw sore from being clenched, to the vivid and unspeakable, from which I wake up thrashing and yelling, leaving me out of sorts for days. Most, though, are solidly between the two extremes- vivid and memorable, disturbing but not horrifying, full of tension instead of terror, and mostly shaken off by the time I get to work.

While I don't have recurring dreams very often (though it has happened on occasion) the vast majority of them fall into two broad themes- one where there is something terrible about to happen that only I can prevent, and no matter how hard I try I know that I don't have enough time and my efforts are futile; and the other where I am being pursued by something horrible that even as I attempt to evade know I cannot escape from. In the recent past I have a couple instances of a new type of nightmare, where, for reasons unknown to me, I am being beaten and tortured. I find these much worse than the others, and on all three occasions have woken up literally screaming.

Mostly my nightmares are populated by my family, and a wide assortment of monsters and beasts. Sometimes my family become the monsters and beasts, but mostly they are the people I am trying to save by preventing the terrible something that is about to happen. But always, whether pursuing or pursued, running free or in someone's thrall, I am on my own, with no one to help me complete my task or escape from danger.

I'm bright enough, I think, connect the dots between the circumstances of my upbringing and my nightmares, and to draw some conclusions about what it all means and where they come from. I clearly fear not being in control of my life, and with being at the whim of forces outside myself. I fear that I will fall short of the tasks that need doing, that I am not good enough or smart enough. I am afraid that I will be all alone in the world when I need help the most.

In case you were wondering, Gentle Readers, it's about as much fun as it sounds.

Posted in Growing Up & Musings & The Past
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