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Failure to Change
Apr. 17th, 2006 09:04 amYou'd think after twenty-mumble years of intimate acquaintance, that nightmares would have lost some of their ability to disturb me - that eventually I'd reach a point where, even if the dream itself was particularly upsetting, that I'd wake up, realize it was just a dream, and sigh with familiarity and contempt while brushing the tattered remnants aside like so many wispy little dust-bunnies.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? I know I do. Unfortunately, it's not working like that.
It could be worse, true. I honestly am grateful that the nightmares have gone from nightly occurrences to less than once a week; it makes life much more liveable. But it frustrates the heck out of me that when those nightmare nights happen, I'm thrown off for the entire morning, sometimes the entire day that follows.
I'll wake up and, even knowing that I'm awake and that it was just another stupid dream, I'm stuck there for who knows how long while I sort through what is real and what actually happened and what was just my imagination playing tricks on me, and try to figure out how to put my emotions back into the right places. Then there's the war over getting out of bed - bed is the bad place where the dreams happen, but most of the bad stuff in the dream happens outside the bed, so going out there isn't all that desireable either.
And once I'm up and out and walking around, the first hour or two is spent in a glazed, half-aware state where I walk through the motions of my morning, with most of my active mind replaying scenes from the dream over and over again. I've tried tricks and songs and mnemonics and distractions, but every mental path leads back to some detail or image from the nightmare. And once I do manage to snap out of it, about half the time I'll still keep remembering flashes of it for the rest of the day.
The ones about friends dying are the worst. Those are the times I have to fight down the need to call them and make sure they're all right. I know I'm not psychic, and dreaming it won't make it happen, but.... there's always the tiny question of what if this is the one time that I'm wrong?
You'd think so, wouldn't you? I know I do. Unfortunately, it's not working like that.
It could be worse, true. I honestly am grateful that the nightmares have gone from nightly occurrences to less than once a week; it makes life much more liveable. But it frustrates the heck out of me that when those nightmare nights happen, I'm thrown off for the entire morning, sometimes the entire day that follows.
I'll wake up and, even knowing that I'm awake and that it was just another stupid dream, I'm stuck there for who knows how long while I sort through what is real and what actually happened and what was just my imagination playing tricks on me, and try to figure out how to put my emotions back into the right places. Then there's the war over getting out of bed - bed is the bad place where the dreams happen, but most of the bad stuff in the dream happens outside the bed, so going out there isn't all that desireable either.
And once I'm up and out and walking around, the first hour or two is spent in a glazed, half-aware state where I walk through the motions of my morning, with most of my active mind replaying scenes from the dream over and over again. I've tried tricks and songs and mnemonics and distractions, but every mental path leads back to some detail or image from the nightmare. And once I do manage to snap out of it, about half the time I'll still keep remembering flashes of it for the rest of the day.
The ones about friends dying are the worst. Those are the times I have to fight down the need to call them and make sure they're all right. I know I'm not psychic, and dreaming it won't make it happen, but.... there's always the tiny question of what if this is the one time that I'm wrong?
