Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Imagine



It’s dark. You’re sound asleep. Only not peacefully. You see awful, terrible, horrible things happening. And there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it.

And then it gets worse. Whoever is doing whatever notices you standing there and decides you need to be taken care of so you can’t interfere. So you can’t tell.

Or even more horrifying. They come to get you to take you along so you can record the heinous things they’re doing. Night after night. You can’t resist. You have to go. You don’t help but you don’t prevent any of the atrocities. You walk to the end of the corridor and watch. And live with it.

Eventually what you’re seeing sinks in and you begin to struggle. You can’t at first. You try to move because you know that will wake you up. You try to scream. You can’t. You’re trapped, watching over and over as someone gets killed in the most terrifying ways ever. Ways you can’t begin to comprehend actually happening to anyone.

But I’ve seen it. Or I’ve been the victim. Sooner or later I do manage to scream myself awake. Yeah, that’s always fun. I used to have Mouse to soothe me with his purrs. The other cats don’t understand how much I need that so they don’t rescue me like he used to.

Once the screaming stops because I’ve realized it’s me and I’m fine, I have to get up and wander around the house a bit. If I don’t, I slip right back into the nightmare and it picks up where it left off. Unless it goes back to the beginning and I get to relive it, knowing what’s coming, not really asleep but not really awake either.

That’s my life and yes, I have gotten used to it to some extent. You do when it’s always been that way.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Barbara,

I can empathize with you since I too have nighmares, but a wonderdrug for my insomnia has helped me at least wake up without remembering what they were. My family says I still make a lot of noises while I sleep, cry out, or even cry, though I'm lucky enough not to recall when I wake up.

I often wonder why my mind goes to those scary places. Dreams are supposed to be heavenly, a respite from life. At times, I've woken from strange dreams with ideas, but it's hard to pull anything out of a horrid nighmare where you know you were running from death.
The chambers of the mind do create a strange place, do they not?

Regina Carlysle said...

Is it the same nightmare each time? I can't imagine living with something like this on a regular basis. What about hypnosis? Would it work for nightmares?

Unknown said...

And despite all this you an inspiring, smart woman to be admired