Nightmares

The other night I had the worst nightmare of my life. Now nightmares are a common occurrence for me. I have all different types, at all different levels. I have ones I have dubbed “anxiety” nightmares. Nightmares may be too strong of a word for them, but basically they are dreams were I am in very stressful situations that I cannot get out of. Probably the most common version of this nightmare for me is I am pretty much dropped into one of my old jobs, but not given any updates on how things run these days. I know this sounds minimal, but they are extreme situations. And one of the things I always prided myself on at any of my old jobs was being in control. So these dreams are very upsetting to me, and usually leave me feeling like I have not slept.

I have nightmares of horrible things happening to people I care about. For example the other night I had one where an old friend of mine had fallen into a coma.

I also have typical monster type dreams. These are probably less upsetting to me, depending on their intensity level. I have ones where Freddy is chasing me, or something like that. They sound cheesy, and they are. Most of them are mildly upsetting.

However my nightmare the other night was the worst! I guess it could qualify as a monster nightmare, but it was much worse than that. I can’t begin to describe it and have it make any sense to anyone but me. I can say it was based on ghosts, but not at the cheesy and amusing level. I woke up yelling things, and unable to breath! This is where things get really weird. I looked at the entrance of my room, and saw someone standing there. I say I saw it because as sure as I am typing this, I knew I saw it. At first I thought it was Paul’s mom, then the longer I stared I realized it wasn’t. Then it was just gone. I was disturbed to say the least. I got out of bed, I had no interest in continuing the dream. And in my head, I was absolutely convinced that our apartment was haunted! However as my head cleared, I relived the event of the “shadow” in the doorway. The more and more I thought about it, I realized I could not have seen what I thought I did. And I have a few reasons for this conclusion. For one it was 4am and absolutely dark in our apartment. There were no computer monitors on, no TVs, no light at all. The second reason is that without my glasses, I am blind as a bat. I could have never seen anything at that distance. The thing that makes this so extreme for me, is that this has never happened to me before. When I “saw” the thing in my doorway, I was positive I was awake. I was thinking about how extreme that nightmare had been. I have never had the lines between awake and sleep so completely blurred like that.

I realize that people may be thinking that I use the term nightmare too liberally. Not all unpleasant dreams are nightmares. And I know this. What causes me to put a dream into the nightmare category is really the anxiety level. If it is so high that my sleep is unsettled, and I wake up emotionally bothered or feeling completely unrested, I call those my nightmares. I guess other people have different qualifications for nightmares, but that is mine.

I did not write this to whine. My sleep problems have plagued me as long as I can remember, and I am quite used to them. I guess that is why the level at which this particular nightmare got to me really bothers me. A lot of my dreams I attribute to my anxiety problems and mental issues. I guess…I am just really tired.