Nightmares.
Apr. 14th, 2007 05:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
linden_jay*In writing this, I'm trying to get something that disturbs me out of my brain so that I can move past it. It upset me, and it's possible that it may upset others. If you're sensitive to reading about dreams that deal with death and loss, please, take a pass on this entry. I promise I won't mind.*
I've always been the sort of person who remembers their dreams, at least for a little while after I wake up. Sometimes it's benign or just plain silly, sometimes it's bizarre, sometimes (often) my alarm clock works it's way into my dream and I end up hitting the snooze button for hours and picking right up where I left off. I have horror dreams (usually after I've watched something scary like Supernatural or something else equally not-at-all-Jay-oriented), and I have mundane, boring dreams. And I have nightmares.
The worst of my nightmares aren't the ones I mentioned above, with horror and ghosts and demons and scary-assed things that spook the crap out of me. They take a different tactic, and I've had them recur since I was about thirteen years old, once every year or two... slightly different every time, but following the same theme and pattern.
In my worst nightmares, someone close to me dies. But it's not just that, although that'd be bad and upsetting enough. I live through every detail, in perfect clarity, in absolute realism, right down to the most mundane of details. The phone call from the police or hospital or family member in the middle of the night. The phone calls to other relatives, having to break the news, watching the other people I love deal with all the stages of grief right in front of me. Planning the memorial service. Having to go on living without them. And I wake up, usually in tears, completely believing that it's true.
I've had these dreams about my father, my sister, the Academic Husband... sometimes more than once. Each time waking up absolutely devastated, then spending the entire damned day trying to shake the dream. These, of course, are the ones that don't just slip off into the ether. These are the ones that I can remember the details of. Remember how it all felt.
Last night, I had one of these dreams about my mom. I can't remember the exact way that she died now, although I'm sure I knew it when I was dreaming it, because they're usually that detailed. I do know it was sudden, that there was no build up to prepare or plan for what life would be like without her gone, especially for my dad. I know that my sister and I were making ourselves sick worrying about him, how he would manage without her.
I remember us sitting on the floor in front of her closet, sorting through her shoes and trying to decide what could be donated somewhere else, what we might have to get rid of. I remember sitting on the floor of my parents bedroom, crying over a pair of old worn out shoes that had belonged to my mother and trying to figure out if my dad would have to sell the house, or if he'd be able to live there without her.
And it wasn't fucking real. It didn't happen. It was 'just' a dream, and it shouldn't still be haunting me now, almost twenty hours after I woke up from it in the first place. But it is. Because it could have been real. It could be. And it's taking longer to shake then I'm comfortable with.
This isn't the point where I try and claim that these dreams are prophecy, because I don't believe that they are. The first time I had them--thirteen, and I dreamed that my truck driving father had been killed in an accident, thanks for the trauma, dream source--it scared me, wondering that. Fifteen years and a dozen dreams like this later, I'm no longer afraid of that. But it brings things up that I don't want to have running around in my subconscious, that I don't want following me around and lingering when I try and sleep again.
I don't know how my dad would cope if he lost my mom. They've been married over 30 years, they met when my mom was still fourteen years old and my dad seventeen. They married when my mom was nineteen and my dad twenty-two (this is why my parents really couldn't say anything about me being engaged at eighteen and married at nineteen). And I know, intellectually, that this was a dream, that it wasn't real... but I can't get the image of my sister and I worrying about him and how he'd manage if my mother wasn't there.
I'm trying to scrape this dream out of the inside of my head with a spatula, and it just won't damned come out. I know it will fade, that I'll forget the specifics and the details, that the horror and the fear and the grief that was so real when I jolted out of sleep this morning will go away, in time. Until then, I'm just going to have to wait it out and deal.
And, when I wake up later today, I'm gonna phone my mom. Just because.
I've always been the sort of person who remembers their dreams, at least for a little while after I wake up. Sometimes it's benign or just plain silly, sometimes it's bizarre, sometimes (often) my alarm clock works it's way into my dream and I end up hitting the snooze button for hours and picking right up where I left off. I have horror dreams (usually after I've watched something scary like Supernatural or something else equally not-at-all-Jay-oriented), and I have mundane, boring dreams. And I have nightmares.
The worst of my nightmares aren't the ones I mentioned above, with horror and ghosts and demons and scary-assed things that spook the crap out of me. They take a different tactic, and I've had them recur since I was about thirteen years old, once every year or two... slightly different every time, but following the same theme and pattern.
In my worst nightmares, someone close to me dies. But it's not just that, although that'd be bad and upsetting enough. I live through every detail, in perfect clarity, in absolute realism, right down to the most mundane of details. The phone call from the police or hospital or family member in the middle of the night. The phone calls to other relatives, having to break the news, watching the other people I love deal with all the stages of grief right in front of me. Planning the memorial service. Having to go on living without them. And I wake up, usually in tears, completely believing that it's true.
I've had these dreams about my father, my sister, the Academic Husband... sometimes more than once. Each time waking up absolutely devastated, then spending the entire damned day trying to shake the dream. These, of course, are the ones that don't just slip off into the ether. These are the ones that I can remember the details of. Remember how it all felt.
Last night, I had one of these dreams about my mom. I can't remember the exact way that she died now, although I'm sure I knew it when I was dreaming it, because they're usually that detailed. I do know it was sudden, that there was no build up to prepare or plan for what life would be like without her gone, especially for my dad. I know that my sister and I were making ourselves sick worrying about him, how he would manage without her.
I remember us sitting on the floor in front of her closet, sorting through her shoes and trying to decide what could be donated somewhere else, what we might have to get rid of. I remember sitting on the floor of my parents bedroom, crying over a pair of old worn out shoes that had belonged to my mother and trying to figure out if my dad would have to sell the house, or if he'd be able to live there without her.
And it wasn't fucking real. It didn't happen. It was 'just' a dream, and it shouldn't still be haunting me now, almost twenty hours after I woke up from it in the first place. But it is. Because it could have been real. It could be. And it's taking longer to shake then I'm comfortable with.
This isn't the point where I try and claim that these dreams are prophecy, because I don't believe that they are. The first time I had them--thirteen, and I dreamed that my truck driving father had been killed in an accident, thanks for the trauma, dream source--it scared me, wondering that. Fifteen years and a dozen dreams like this later, I'm no longer afraid of that. But it brings things up that I don't want to have running around in my subconscious, that I don't want following me around and lingering when I try and sleep again.
I don't know how my dad would cope if he lost my mom. They've been married over 30 years, they met when my mom was still fourteen years old and my dad seventeen. They married when my mom was nineteen and my dad twenty-two (this is why my parents really couldn't say anything about me being engaged at eighteen and married at nineteen). And I know, intellectually, that this was a dream, that it wasn't real... but I can't get the image of my sister and I worrying about him and how he'd manage if my mother wasn't there.
I'm trying to scrape this dream out of the inside of my head with a spatula, and it just won't damned come out. I know it will fade, that I'll forget the specifics and the details, that the horror and the fear and the grief that was so real when I jolted out of sleep this morning will go away, in time. Until then, I'm just going to have to wait it out and deal.
And, when I wake up later today, I'm gonna phone my mom. Just because.
