Nightmares


When I was a kid I called them nightmares. Today I relegate them to the realm of disturbing. They do not contain monsters borrowed from a late night show my parents told me not to watch but from a odd arrangement of reality. They dwell in the area of the possible from which there seems to be no escape.

Per Wiki: A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear and/or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time.

These days I can no longer connect my disturbing dreams to bad food or bad movie or bad news. I more often see them as heralds of a bumpy road ahead or a signal that I have overlooked something important I need to attend to. I can describe them more by the terms despair, and anxiety and sadness than fear or horror. And with dawn and a cup of coffee I can begin to make sense sometimes of the images floating unbidden into my conscious world. Disjointed probably describes them the best.

I feel like a juggler of chain saws that is about to drop them all. And what I cannot remember from last night's dream sequence (oh, yes for me them come as a series) is more disturbing than what I do remember. And was last night just the latest in the series I do not remember but as a vague sense of unrest when I awake. Was this one remembered only because the alarm I accidentally set went off. Are all the questions in point of fact more disturbing than the dreams themselves.

I rode into the pre-dawn on a dark horse chased by images I cannot remember or totally forget.

Do you have nightmares? What form do they take? And how do you shake them off?

Comments

  1. Terry RoweAugust 10, 2011 at 6:07 AM

    Nightmares - yes. And the feelings they generate cling even when the light of day is fully on me. The only way I can dispel the nightmare leftovers is to get busy - write, clean, create - anything to fill my mind with positive energy and to clear my spirit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 10, 2011 at 6:26 AM

    I very rarely have nightmares. I tend to dream about things currently going on in my life and a lot of times it is about jewelry, making jewelry. Last night I was making strange metal shapes that were really too big for earrings, but that is what I was going to turn them into!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Blog of BeeAugust 14, 2011 at 3:14 PM

    I have extremely vivid dreams which I choose not to call nightmares. The only dream I would class as a nightmare is a dream of my ex mother in law.

    seriously I have pretty frightening dreams most of which I put down to anxiety. If I dream snakes I know there is deceit around me and I usually know where it is coming from.

    For the last three nights I have dreamt of the same person and each time that person is doing something underhand, always in the same situation which affects me. And she always has a smile on her face. I did not want to see a back stabber in this person but I have been warned that she is not what she seems by members of my family.

    It's the vivid dreams - the ones that stay with me for days that I have difficulty in handling,

    ReplyDelete

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