On Nightmares
Feb. 14th, 2003 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksRight. So I've gotten used to the fact that even my innocuous dreams would be considered reason by most of humanity to wake up screaming. This has, after all, gone on for years, and I have become accustomed to the incredible level of violence, negativity, pain, gore, and psychological trauma of my dreamscape. I have no idea why I dream the way I dream-- this whole extremely-vivid-nightmare thing started up when I was about eleven or so for no apparent reason and has continued since-- but I've gotten to the point where I can dream about walking through a New York City subway station barefoot as it slowly fills with blood up to my waist and drowned rats start hitting my knees and then wake up and merely say 'Ew' and then take a moment to be thankful that the blood is not associated with anyone I know personally or have seen lose it and then go on with my life. About once a year I have genuine wake-up-screaming-or-scream-in-my-sleep nightmares that leave me attempting for a week or so afterwards to get as little sleep as possible, and about every three months I have a dream that is so exhausting it is as though I never went to bed.
I had one of the latter kind last night, and my subconscious is not bloody well playing fair. Nasty things happening to me, used to it. Nasty things happening to people I know in my presence and there not being a thing I can do about it, used to it. Bad outtakes from La Blue Girl, used to it.
Last night there was a city, which I had made. I had planned it, I ruled it. The technology level was late medieval, but I knew the modern techniques of planning, sanitation, etc. It was the best city in the world and I knew it. About a million people lived in it and seemed to be as happy as a million people can be at any given time. And, for long and complicated plot reasons, I had to tread water in the middle of the river which ran through the city and watch as the entire thing burned to the ground, in such a way that absolutely no one, but me, got out. I had to spend a great deal of effort swimming, as the river was on fire in places due to things like runoff from the bars, and I had to watch the entity that was setting it on fire fly over it and laugh. And then I had to wait for the fires to die down, and haul myself out of the river, and attempt, all by myself, to bury my city.
I don't know how my subconscious comes up with things like this. I don't know why my subconscious comes up with things like this. I am as tired as though I had not slept in a week.
Either I won't dream at all for the next month or so, which will be good, or I'll have a worsening spiral of nightmares that will end in one of the great classically awful nobody should have to deal with that sort of thing dreams. Let's hope the former; the latter is always both upsetting and exhausting.
Well, blathering about it made me feel somewhat better. Off to Roman History.
I had one of the latter kind last night, and my subconscious is not bloody well playing fair. Nasty things happening to me, used to it. Nasty things happening to people I know in my presence and there not being a thing I can do about it, used to it. Bad outtakes from La Blue Girl, used to it.
Last night there was a city, which I had made. I had planned it, I ruled it. The technology level was late medieval, but I knew the modern techniques of planning, sanitation, etc. It was the best city in the world and I knew it. About a million people lived in it and seemed to be as happy as a million people can be at any given time. And, for long and complicated plot reasons, I had to tread water in the middle of the river which ran through the city and watch as the entire thing burned to the ground, in such a way that absolutely no one, but me, got out. I had to spend a great deal of effort swimming, as the river was on fire in places due to things like runoff from the bars, and I had to watch the entity that was setting it on fire fly over it and laugh. And then I had to wait for the fires to die down, and haul myself out of the river, and attempt, all by myself, to bury my city.
I don't know how my subconscious comes up with things like this. I don't know why my subconscious comes up with things like this. I am as tired as though I had not slept in a week.
Either I won't dream at all for the next month or so, which will be good, or I'll have a worsening spiral of nightmares that will end in one of the great classically awful nobody should have to deal with that sort of thing dreams. Let's hope the former; the latter is always both upsetting and exhausting.
Well, blathering about it made me feel somewhat better. Off to Roman History.
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Date: 2003-02-14 09:16 am (UTC)I had one where they let us up on the roof every wednesday to see the sun, feel it on our faces, breathe the wind...look out over the city that we could never be a part of again, and see the people moving about below.
It wasn't a nightmare, but it wasn't a happy dream. There was a profound sense of loss.
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Date: 2003-02-14 09:48 am (UTC)*hug* here's hoping you have no dreams.
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Date: 2003-02-14 10:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-15 03:38 pm (UTC)May you have sweet dreams.