When Darkeness Breathes...

IV Nightmare

Nightmares. These deep throbbing visions. Flashes of lights, black, white, gray and red. Rapid heartbeats and cold sweats. Waking feeling like a marathon has been run. This deep gut feeling that something is wrong, that I am wrong. Occasionally I remember someone or ... something from my dreams. A Being in the background, blurred out. A place of gray. Sadness. Cold. Fear. Then it washes away into forgetfulness. Trying to hold onto it, nearly impossible. This throbbing darkeness that makes the brain seize up and stop functioning.

I could not understand what was happening. These dreams made me sick. And worse. The pain and discomfort. I was getting worse. There were no answers. No one could explain what was happening to me. I was disappearing in the pain. Why were there no answers? How could this be happening and there be no evidence for doctors to find? What in the hell was going on inside me?

Night Terrors were the diagnosis. So bad, so intense, so terrifying. My mother would hear me scream. It would be late at night or early morning. Coming to find me. I would not be there. More times than not, I would be in the back of the closet, behind all the hanging clothes and heavily packed boxes, rocking back and forth. She would have to drag me from the closet and once out, I would stare unseeing, crying inconsolably and my arms flaying out. Screaming for my mother, begging for help, even though she was right there in front of me. It would take hours sometimes, to get me under control.

Eventually we went to Children's Hospital. When they did the tests, the EEG's and MRI's they found that my brain waves were off. That when I was sleeping, there were waves that showed that I was awake and there were other brain waves that were active that should not even be active. It was a mystery. Pain and darkeness.

My mom kept researching, I went through tests periodically. It involved her having to be ever vigilant once I went to sleep, because she never knew where I would wake up.

How could dreams be so bad? So horrific and terrifying? How could they lead to so many issues and so many health problems?

When they are not just dreams...

©2016, Aelfwynn MacGregor, AMB