Feelings Diary

Nightmares

There are hard days. Stressful days. Days in which we have no time for ourselves. Days in which we have to face trouble. To face people we can't stand, but we have to. There are days too discouraging, that they're hard to ignore. Days too sad, that we don't even want to see them through. There are days we just don't want to live. We just want to skip them, have a good night's sleep, and wake up the next day. As if it were a kind of reset. And, in a way, it is. That's the thing about hard days; they're easy to get by. You just have to make it through it, and hope for a better day tomorrow.

But what about nights? What about bad nights? Is it that easy?
Personally, I don't think so.

Having insomnia is terrible. Especially when you truly need to sleep. Has it ever happened to you that you need to sleep well because you have a very important day the next day? And somehow, it's impossible to fall asleep. You just can't. And it's terrible; stressful and tiring. And it has consequences on next day's event. You can't just sleep through it... BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! That's exactly the problem.

And that's just regular insomnia. But, what about nightmares? Do you get them? If so, is it often?

Nightmares are even worse. They haunt you in your sleep. They take advantage of your vulnerability. They strike just when you're relaxed, resting, or just waiting for tomorrow.

They don't mind if it's your only time for resting, or if you really need that sleep. They just strike. Ruthless and relentlessly. They get to the deepest of you. They use what you fear most, what you hate, or whatever is giving you trouble in that moment. They blend it together, they show it to you, and they convince you that it's real.

You see? That's the problem with nightmares; they're dreams, at the end of the day. And we tend to think dreams are real. At least our mind does. It gets played by them. We truly live every experience we dream of. In that moment, it's as real as everything else. The only difference is that it stops when we wake up.

So, every nightmare we have is one bad experience that we truly live. They're bad things that we need to go through. Just as if they were real. The only difference is that we get that relief when we wake up. That moment in which we're thankful it wasn't more than just a dream.

But what if we try to fall asleep again and we can't? What if we keep getting them? What if those nightmares become a regular thing? A recurring thing, instead of just one-time dreams? Then we have some sort of higher problem.

Having nightmares often is even worse, because you're being attacked in your sleep. Like I said, sometimes that's the only moment we have to rest. Some nights we really need to get some sleep. Some other nights we really need that escape from reality, to get on to the next day. Sometimes it's just necessary... AND THAT'S WHEN THEY STRIKE!

They take away your sleeping time. Your resting time. The one moment of your day that is only for yourself, just to let you continue with your life. But they don't care. They don't mind. They just take it away. They take that precious and necessary moment. They haunt you and make you suffer. They make you afraid to go to sleep again. And sometimes if you do, they just strike again, and again, and again... as many times as they want. Sometimes in the same night. Some other times they spread through different nights. But they thing is; they won't leave you alone. They won't leave you be. They're just waiting, and choosing the perfect timing. Sometimes when you expect it the least, but other times when you just want to stop thinking about it.

Nightmares bring the worst things to you. They can make you go through the loss of a friend of a family member. And we said they're real (at least in that moment), so you could actually go through a different loss every night. Does that seem like something that should happen? Are we supposed to live through something like that?

They can also bring up your worse fears and make you face them every single night. Whether they're insects, heights, monsters, ghosts, or whatever... it does not matter how ridiculous, because it will be real in that moment. And in that moment, you'll be as scared as you probably haven't been yet.

And the worst thing about having them often is that the relief moment that we get afterwards just starts losing effect. The more you get them, the less relieved you feel when you wake up, for you know that you might get another one as soon as you fall asleep again. And even if you don't, you may get it the next night... or maybe the next one after that. That's the problem. You're being haunted. You're always haunted. And you can't escape from that. It's in your mind. You carry it with you. And you have to go to sleep, at the end of the day. You need to. You can't avoid it. You can't escape them because you need to face the possibility of getting them... EVERY... SINGLE... NIGHT.

You need to sleep.

You ought to sleep.

They're waiting for you.

And they'll keep waiting.

They can wait forever.

But you can't...