Nightmareland

I am not one who frequently has nightmares, or really any sleep problems of any sort. In this, as in so many other areas of life, I count myself among the lucky few.

The frequency of nightmares has increased in adulthood, and throughout my life I have tended to have a series of nightmares if one did occur. However, still, I find it strange that every night for the past few weeks I have a wide array of nightmares.

Once a man came up behind me and yelled in my ear at the top of his lungs, "Fuck!" And I practically jumped out of bed, in reality. One time a weird creepy stalker was babbling on incoherently between legalese and english trying to convince me I needed him. I had finally figured out he was completely harmless and sort of chuckling about him when my Grandma walked up behind me and started following us up some stairs. She fell backwards, almost gained her balance at the landing, but then fell into the wall and cracked her head open. The stalker-guy called the ambulance while I held her.

This one was so terrible I wasn't even able to tell it to my husband. Somehow saying it out loud seems like bad luck or like at the very least it would make it more real to me.

I've been shot several times, and then there have been milder more along the lines of going to class in my underwear or an unspoken terror waking me up.

Last night a head, very obviously recently severed from a body of an old pale man, with huge fangs and small white angel wings sprouting from the wound, swept down and feasted on somebody next to me and then swooped at my head gnashing his teeth. Unfortunately for him I had some kind of invisible force shield around me, but I realized it wouldn't last for long. I purposely woke myself up from this one. I can't make this shit up.

I don't know whether reading several Lovecraft stories yesterday brought on this nightmare, or whether I was drawn to read the Lovecraft stories because I have been having so many nightmares, or whether the same subconscious nightmare-makers compelled me to read the stories.

I don't necessarily regret having done so. I am a very fearful person, full of cowardice. I think I have been facing some of my demons lately, and this I see as a good thing.