Monday, December 3, 2012

In Which I Have Nightmares

It's time for bed, but I'm procrastinating.  Play one more video game, write something on my blog, whatever.  I really NEED my sleep since I've been chasing twins all day today, and tomorrow I'm gonna get up and chase twins all day AGAIN, but I'm putting it off.  Putting off going to bed because I'm still nervous from last night, during which, at about 2am, when I was asleep, I heard my husband gasp in a horrible way, so I woke up and rolled over to check on him, and about that time, he screamed "HEEEEYYY!"  in his maddest possible voice.  I woke him up asking "What's wrong?  What's wrong?"  He was just having a nightmare.  People were attacking him, and he was frozen, and he thought if he could yell at them loud enough, it would scare them away.  I'm sure "HEY!"  wouldn't scare off would-be attackers, probably not even dream ones, but it sure scared the poop out of me!  He never does that.  I'm the one who has nightmares and talks in my sleep and screams in my sleep and all that stuff.  It took hours for my adrenaline to quit surging so I could fall back asleep.  *Shudder.*

I myself have been having really bad nightmares lately, and so has Brenna.  We dream about people in our family getting shot, or killed in some other horrible way.  We dream about tornadoes coming and smashing us and our family to bits.  We have horrible ones about Charles in particular, I think because the two of us watched him have the seizure the day he flatlined before he got his pacemaker.  I honestly think Bren and I both have a mild case of PTSD from that little episode. 

Sometimes I have nightmares that no one wants to be friends with me anymore.  Or that I'm at a convention and I can't find my family.  Sometimes I'm in a crowded movie theater, and it's very dark, and I'm looking for whoever I'm supposed to be meeting, but every time I think it's them and walk up and start to sit down, the face turns around and it's someone scary.

But my favorite nightmares are the ones about peeing.  I have them all the time.  I'm really not sure WHY, except maybe I really need to wake up and go to the bathroom.  I'll be in a place full of people, and the signs will say that this is the restroom, but I'll go in there and there are no walls, no stalls, nothing.  And what's purported to be the commode will be something like and upholstered chair, with no hole in it or anything.  And I'll be aruguing with people "But this is not a toilet!  But everyone can see me!  I really have to go!  Where's the real toilet?"  But people will convince me to pee on a chair with upholstery and no walls around it with all kinds of people watching me, and I'm the most horrible kind of mortified.

It would be nice to understand WHY I dream these things and how to make all dreams good ones.  I guess I'll just go on to bed and hope that tonight I have the ones with the giant houses that I've inherited, or the ones where I'm flying, or the ones where I'm running naked and happy through fields full of fruit trees or down beautiful beaches. Those may be weird, but they're my happy ones, and they're infinitely preferable to the ones where my teeth shatter and fall out, or I pee in a chair in the middle of a mall.  Anyone else have this kind of weirdness in their subconscious?  Please say yes!

13 comments:

  1. No I don't have nightmares. I also don't sleep. Hard to have any dreams if you don't sleep.

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  2. I think all of you have your security threatened in a very real way and it's eating up your dreamland. Your family is RIGHT HERE, and it will, somehow, all be okay.

    That said...I have had the EXACT dream about weird bathrooms, including an upholstered chair with no walls, stalls, or even a hole in the chair. Googling pee dreams left me no wiser. I think it's just a social anxiety thing, but that just makes me feel like a freak...so you get to be a freak too.

    Hope you got a night of dreamless sleep!

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  3. I also have dreams about having to pee and going into what is supposed to be a bathroom but there are no toilets. So I go find another one and it only has chairs in a very open room with lots of people walking around, etc. Very humiliating and frustrating. I also occasionally have dreams where something awful is about to happen to me but I am paralyzed (including my mouth) and all I can do is try to scream without moving my lips. I wake my husband up with these weird screams and it takes me a while to recover when I wake up. But I also have the flying dreams and those are fun. I usually start out hopping and keep getting higher and higher till I'm flying. Only problem is, sometimes I can't figure out how to get down. Don't know why we do this, but dreams are definitely weird.

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  4. Never tried to pee in an upholstered chair in a faux bathroom! That one is new to me. I've nightmared many times the paralyzed impending doom thing Marilyn described and also that I have to cross a high rise bridge with no side rails and I'm dragging myself across on my stomach right down the center line. One of my favorite recurring dreams is that I am out in public and suddenly realize that I am naked and proceed to reason with myself that if I act nonchalant about it no one will notice. I am totally mortified but acting like it is no big deal! Lately I keep dreaming that I am trying to get something done (nothing in particular and it's always changing) but it just never gets finished. I will wake up and go to the bathroom and go back to sleep and get right back into the same annoying dream. It goes on and on all night. Very frustrating but not really a nightmare.
    I do have the skipping, hopping, then flying dreams regularly too and they're always so real I wake up feeling I could do it if I tried hard enough!

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  5. Very interesting that you guys have such similar dreams. Sounds like you might be related...you think? :)

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  6. I used to have the flying dream ALL THE TIME! I'd be walking around somewhere inside, & suddenly figure out how to catch the air currents with my body...swooping around the room. And yeah, it feels very natural, like it's something you could always do but you just figured out HOW.

    Similarly, I went through a spell of dreaming about doing handstands, which has never happened in real life without the assistance of a wall. But my handstands weren't normal handstands...I could dance around on my hands, and did dances on tabletops in my dreams, on my hands.

    Yeah, go figure!

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  7. Yeah, I used to do the bounce, skip, hop, fly thing, but lately it's ice skating! With no ice skates. I just start scooting my legs around and suddenly I'm doing triple lutzes and all kinds of stuff. And then sometimes I'm doing incredible feats of strength, like I'm a gymnast. It makes no sense.

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  8. I did have someone in my family (I won't say who) pee on an uphostered chair in the middle of the night. And then they tried to blame it on the vsry snall dog. Yes it is funny. We still tease them about it.

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    1. Did it happen to be the small dog you had in your family years ago who, much to my chagrin, happened to be named "Shelly?"

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    2. Was it the same little dog who scared me so bad out on your back deck that I dropped my most favorite cookie ever - Pinwheel, and after I dropped it he gobbled it up? Never liked that dog after that!!!

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  9. Well shoot I feel left out.. I've never had the hop skip and a fly dream?? But I most definitely have the trying to scream but can't make the sound come out nightmare. It totally freaks brad out because it comes out sounding like some freakish alien moan. When he wakes me up I'm covered in the biggest head to toe chill bumps ever! I hate it. Then I'm terrified to go back to sleep. Why can't we ever re-enter the nice fun dreams? And btw Shelly, I'll have you know there are some nights now that I actually sleep all night without talking out-loud. :-)

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    1. What was it you were saying that one time? SOmething about a candle? I keep thinking "Put the candle back" but that was a line from Young Frankenstein.

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  10. I have no idea! I rely on your memory for random events ;-)

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