Rant Time 4

Nightmares|Rant Time

Close your eyes for a second or two. When you open them, tell me what you saw, what you felt.

Did you see pitch blackness? An image? A face? Did you feel something? Or nothing at all? Emptiness, peace, calm?

Whatever you saw or what you heard or what you felt, those few seconds will be the calmest you will ever be in your life. When you close your eyes to sleep, or to rest, that is when you're at your calmest. That is where you are safest. Nightmares or dreams cannot hurt you, they cannot touch you. You wake up feeling either like shit from a monster in your head, or like a fairytale character.

I am a sufferer of frequent nightmares. It didn't start until I got together with my girlfriend. Then all of a sudden, every time I closed my fucking eyes, an image popped up in my head of her getting hurt or something happening to her. She's 5,000 miles away, so I cannot protect her. I'm about as useful as a deflated raft to a drowning man.

If I just feel, there's terror there. I've been with her for almost seven months (as of tomorrow) and not once has the terror gone away. We've both admitted that the distance is killing us, but we push on. That's what we do. We don't want to lose each other, so we take the distance and when the huge gap in our time zones limits our talk time on certain days of the week. And I will take all the nightmares in the world for her. That one single minute of imagined horror is nothing compared to the true horror that would be losing her.

I always tell her about my nightmares. I wake up in cold sweats with a splitting headache almost every time and grab my phone. It's so common now that she automatically asks "what was it this time?"

At times I'll wake up after a nightmare of her (which is all they are now) and look around my bed for her. I'm always so disoriented after a nightmare that I forget she's not here. After one nightmare of her being severely injured, I woke up in a cold sweat and checked myself for her blood.

When I close my eyes, I know that's the safest I'll ever be, but it doesn't feel like it. When I clear my mind, all I can feel is the horror that comes with loving someone more than anything. It really is true horror and fear.

It's been a few days (okay, over a week) and I'm picking up where I left off in the previous paragraph. I finally had a good dream of her. It was only a few seconds but it made a longing impression on my mind. To be honest, I was afraid that I would never have a happy dream of her. But I did.

Maybe it was the hope that I would have one that brought it on. Maybe it was so much time thinking and worrying over these nightmares that told my brain to haul it into high gear. Whatever it was, I got my happy dream. After dealing with my nightmares and assuring me that she's okay, my girlfriend was so happy to know that I finally had a dream about her that wasn't bad.

I've been sick (5th case of sinusitis in six months and my doctor is at a loss of what to do from here) for a few days, so I really can't sleep enough to have any dreams. And I can say, judging by the odds of dreams vs. nightmares, I'm grateful for that. I'm lucky if I have another good dream of her by New Years. There's no telling how many nightmares I'll have until then.

I just know, when I close my eyes, there is both terror and happiness. I think I just have to really try hard to find that happiness. I can't do it by simply wanting it; I have to work for it. And of course that really sucks ass, but I've strived for happiness before and obtained it. It's the workload I have to put in to get even one good dream.

It should come naturally. I think of her all the time. Maybe it's the stress of everything going on around me. Stress causes nightmares in some people. The more stress, the more nightmares I have. The more time I spend annoying my girlfriend and wondering if she still alive (yes, I've asked her that question before).

I don't wanna be clingy. I want her to be able to breathe without me figuratively clinging to her at all times of the day and night like a cold she can't shake off. But the more I feel, the worse it gets. I love her. I don't care if I have a million nightmares, because I wake up and she's there.

It's that one minute in my sleep that really kills me.
~
Sierra ⚡️