The Nightmare of Nightmares

Nightmares. Apparently, everyone has had a nightmare at some point. They're pretty common, I'm sure. However, when you combine a nightmare with an anxiety disorder, it's a whole other story.

I seem to have nightmares all the time. Some are worse than others. I've had the nightmare that rips you from your sleep, covered in sweat and feeling like your heart is about to leap right out of your body. Not fun. I've also had the nightmare that you wake slowly from and can almost feel yourself pulling away, which adds a whole new level of eery discomfort to the experience. Not fun.

It's hard to imagine anything worse than those two options, but for me, there is. Of course there would be. I don't know if it's the anxiety disorder or I just have a very odd brain, but I do have a third even worse kind of nightmare. It's the nightmare within a dream. It's bizarre. This nightmare begins like any other does, normally it's pitch black and no lights seem to work, I panic and so on...normal nightmarish stuff, and then I wake up. Well, that's not so weird, you might be saying, but wait, there's more. After waking up from this particular dream of not such fun stuff, I actually realize I'm still really sleeping. And I yell at myself to wake up, and I mean yell, screaming at the top of my dream lungs to make my real self wake up...eventually I do. It is the most unsettling, awful feeling.

I'm not sure if anyone else ever has those - no one I've specifically asked ever has. I don't know why I have them. I wish I didn't.

As you might guess by the timing of this post - it's currently 3:32 am - I had a nightmare tonight. Lucky for me it was a #2 type dream. Not as bad as the others, but still NOT FUN. Sigh.

(Not exactly the post I had planned for my return to blogging, but then things don't always go to plan, sometimes life and nightmares just happen.)