Night Life
I am running as fast as I can with a dark, shadowy figure chasing me as I fumble in my purse for the key to my front door. I am terrified and my heart is pounding as hard as it can. I am running towards my house but actually running in place as a cartoon character does. My progress is hindered by the wind from the tornado. I wake up knowing there are people in my house and they plan to hurt or kill me. I have been kidnapped by terrorists and am being held hostage in a cave. My mother is a terrorist complete with middle-eastern garb and a huge shiny black automatic machine gun. I am in school and walk in to my classroom where a test I didn’t know about is being given. I am in school and can’t find my locker, don’t know the combination and don’t remember what classes I am taking or the time and location they meet. My supervisor at work is berating me for my incompetence in front of my coworkers and clients. My sister and my mom tell me I am the worst person in the world reciting a litany of my errors and faults. They never want to see me again. Welcome to my nightlife, the world inside my head when I try to sleep. I have been diagnosed with Nightmare Disorder, an actual illness listed in the DSM IV.
My earliest memories are of insomnia and nightmares. These began before I started school. Then the nightmares consisted of tornadoes, witches and window-peekers. Now when I sleep the nightmares start as soon as I reach REM sleep. While I am having a nightmare, I am terrified-they seem so real. I awaken just before the point of actual harm in my dream. I believe the dream really occurred and I am terrified, shaking and my heart racing. Sometimes I find myself screaming. I am in a fog, a state of almost consciousness until I ascertain it was only a nightmare. After I convince myself I am safe, I go back to sleep. This poses another problem. I either resume the same dream or start another one equally as frightening only to wake up after another twenty minutes or so, again terrified with my heart racing. This cycle repeats over and over until I finally get out of bed exhausted and shaken. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen every night, some nights I don’t sleep at all.
I feel I'm lucky if I dream. However, I used to wake up every night being hit by a train and I'd always die. So I know what it feels like and I sympathize along with you.
ReplyDeleteI can't tell who posted this but wow. This is so powerful. I get a clear sense from this of how terrifying waking up from these dreams must be. This piece takes a real risk in recounting something very personal, but something we can understand and empathize with. It succeeds in the sensory details it gives us about how it feels to wake up to this. You are shaking, your heart is racing, you are screaming...all of those things are specific and valuable. The main thing I would love to see as a reader is more of this. Where does the story go from here? Is this a story about how you cope with these nightmares and the difficulties that not sleeping can cause? Expand and discover. Don't be afraid to just write whatever comes out. Just get it on the page, and then if you want to, you can go back and revise. Also, what is DSM IV and REM? Thanks for this, I can't wait to maybe see more.
ReplyDeleteAnna
Anna,
ReplyDeleteThis is from Debbie J. The DSM-iv is the manual used for psychiatric diagnoses. REM is rapid eye movement sleep-the portion of sleep when dreams occur. Thanks for your comments. I want to work on this some more as it is a very unusual diagnosis, even my psychiatric nurse practitioner doesn't know what it is!