Nightmares

Everyone who dreams is a storyteller.

Dear Writer,

I don’t have nightmares very often. Usually, my dreams are all flying and water, creative stuff. A plane that’s going to crash, but it ends up landing in water and everything’s wet, but safe. I’m trying to cross a bridge, and the water is just an inch above the bridge, and my feet get wet, and it’s fine. I have a lot of dreams about being famous, but I forgot I was famous, and when I find out that I’m famous, I’m usually disappointed.

That kind of thing. Creativity dreams.

I mean, I have stress dreams from time to time—I forget about a meeting and show up on Zoom with my hair all bed-heady, or I need to get something done but am being thwarted at every turn—that kind of thing, sure. But nightmares? Brutal, bloody, visceral death and terror?

Not for a couple of years.

Until last night.

Without getting into too much detail, I was part of a group of people who were living through a horror movie, and terrible things were happening. Visceral, bloody terrible things. And right when we had nowhere else to go and we were absolutely going to die horrible deaths, I decided we would rewind the movie and go back to where we started and make different choices and not end up in that terrible place.

And then I woke up. It was 2:47 in the morning. Ian was up late working and I was so terrified I couldn’t get out of bed to go get him. I just sat there, huddled under the covers, freaked out and wondering, “What the hell was that about?”

It’s just not how my subconscious works, unless there’s something really wrong. So, in a stroke of serendipity, Ian came to bed about ten minutes later and snuggled me and I calmed down and fell asleep and immediately had more nightmares until I woke up at 7:00 a.m. feeling worn out and stressed and totally exhausted and wondering what in the world was up with me?

And then I realized suddenly what had happened yesterday that I hadn’t fully processed. I was reading an article about the waning COVID numbers and Fauci said something about the pandemic ending soon and I thought, for just a moment, It’s over.

And that’s what broke me.

My kid had pretty bad asthma when she was young. She almost died once. When we were in the hospital, when the crisis was live and she was in danger, I was great. Cucumber cool. The nurses were always amazed.

When we came home and everything was fine, when it was over, that’s when I fell apart. I crashed, completely exhausted. I cried. I had panic attacks, the whole nine yards.

I think that, for a moment, for just a moment yesterday, I thought, It’s over, and my subconscious said, Okay. Time for us to process the apocalypse, then, and served me up an evening of solid terror. Honestly, my subconscious wasn’t even trying that hard; it gave me an exaggerated representation of what it feels like to see so many people dying, in pain, suffering, sick, and wondering when or if it was going to come for me. And it’s not like we’re out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. Fauci preceded “over” with “almost” but I heard “over” and my mind went, Alrighty then.

It’s when the real danger has passed that the terror sets in, and the dreams make you work through what you’ve just lived through. Dreams are the stories our conscious mind doesn’t know we need.

But the subconscious always knows, doesn’t it?

Everything,

L