Nightly Terrors

"Sleep is like a fever, and I’m glad when it ends...” ~ Ani Difranco

I’ve been having very turbulent dreams again recently. The last few days I have had to get up early & take showers because I wake up all sweaty. Last night I had a nightmare that my sis was transferring from her school in NYC back to the University that our father works at. I knew that she was only doing it because my father had pressured her into it, but I couldn’t change her mind. I was yelling at her and my father, but nothing would work. She said she was gonna live in the dorms with friends from high school. I was frantic because I knew she was ruining her life and I felt so powerless to stop it, it was awful.

The night before I dreamt that Andy (Rapist #2/Ex-roommate) was chasing me. No matter what I did I couldn’t shake him. Even after he fell and got all muddy he got up and kept chasing me. I was screaming and nobody would help - even though there were people there. He kept grabbing me & I would fight my way free, but not for long. The road we were on looked like the one Monkey lives off of in GA. That means there was a sidewalk but also a ditch and wilderness. So he would push me in the ditch & into the trees and I was getting all cut up.

And last weekend, I dreamt that it was my 45th birthday. I know, because I saw the date written down & it was 2025. The bad part of that dream was that it was like I had no memory of the intervening 18 years, and so one by one I found out sad things. Particularly that K and I were divorced, and that I had a son after our marriage. It was an awful feeling. I felt so much sadness for letting him down, I felt sure that the break up was my fault because I am so bad at this relationship thing. I felt that I had probably just got fed up and left him. And it broke my heart. I was sobbing when I woke up.

Usually I get bad dreams when I take pills to make me sleep, but I haven’t done that lately. I have no idea what the cause of this all is, but I wish it would stop. I had gone a few months without these kinds of horrible dreams, and it was really nice. Sometimes I hate my brain.