Bad Dreams

I have had chronic nightmares for as many years as I can remember.  Having nightmares has been a normal part of my life.  It seems odd now as I write that sentence, but I do not know if it is unusual or if many people do. 

I have had horrific nightmares, some with patterns, a number of them for many many years.   For example, I have watched my baby brother (as he aged) drown in all ways imaginable, beginning when I was a little girl.  I once called him at his place of work shaking and crying in order to make sure he was ok after watching him drown in my dream while ice climbing after the wall of ice turned into a torrent of water.  I could see his face drowning as clear as I can see anyone while awake and I could not get to him.  My baby brother almost drowned for real when he was little more than a baby.  My parents were installing a pool and did not secure the area around it before water went in and as a toddler he walked out the back door into the pool area and fell in.  I have an image in my brain of my dad in the pool with his work clothes on and shaggy hair longer than he has now.  I do not know if that is the image my mind created from being told of my brother’s almost drowning or if I saw it, which may explain why I have had nightmares since childhood of him drowning in a myriad of ways.  I think most of my nightmares have to do with things my brain is trying to deal with, as many of them are easily tied to things that have happened to me.

I am typing this now because I just woke up from a dream  that was both very brief and very briefly scary at the end and it had got me thinking of a lifetime of having nightmares.  Is that normal?

This particular dream started out with me in the company of two of my childhood friends, one male, one female, as adults, seemingly in an apartment we all shared, though the three of us never shared an apartment together.  In the dream I was worried that my female friend was drinking too much.  I do not remember ever worrying about her drinking too much and I rarely drink so it makes no sense, as many dreams do not, except for possibly one thing.  There is a very powerful emotional memory stored somewhere in my brain of her being drunk on almost no alcohol because she was suffering from an eating disorder at the time.  That particular night, in a restaurant washroom, myself and her other girlfriends tried to come up with a plan to help her, which included my asking my family doctor if he would take her on as a patient, because she refused to go see her family doctor thinking he/she would tell her parents about her not eating.  That is the only alcohol memory of her I have, though it was a very powerful one as she had one drink and was then an absolute mess. 

Back to my dream…after my questioning whether she was drinking too much, we three were then somewhere else, entering some place that was seemingly a restaurant with bench style tables and then I knew it too be a classroom and then shortly after that someone said that ‘he (professor/teacher) had not shown and never did’.  Then everyone was gone and I was alone in the space.

After that I was taking a shower and then using the particular kind of shampoo that I am presently using.  Then the shower seemed to be in a room next to where it had been moments before and farther away from the area with the bench style tables.  At some point I saw a dead cat in the corner of the room with the tables, or thought I did.  Then there was water above the level of the dead cat.  Then I was washing my hair, realized I was wearing my clothes and started to hear a man shouting very loudly.

I then took ear plugs out of my ears (apparently I was showering with ear plugs) to hear a man shout, “there is a man in the house with a gun”, and I knew that to be police telling me they were in the house with a gun, like they were warning me or someone else that they were coming in and either I or whoever else better come out.

Then I shot awake a second later sweating and with my heart racing.

The voice that shouted (that I knew to be the police) “there is a man in the house with a gun” was so clear, as clear as someone standing next to me while awake, so when I awoke I did not know if it was in my dream or someone shouting into or near my apartment door.

I walked toward to front door frightened and listening for any sounds in the hallway.

I looked out the peephole and saw no one. I stood there for a time and heard nothing…so I went and made breakfast.

I am going to eat it now!

Elina Grace Edwin