Nightmares

I woke up just under an hour ago.  I was standing in Amanda's bedroom, my back to the closet, pillows strewn on the floor, and Amanda trying to talk me down.  Finally I calmed down and realized where I was, and who I was with.

I'd been dreaming -- dreaming about something shapeless and horrible that scared me beyond words, and something that I was trying very hard to get away from.

Once Amanda calmed me down, checked to see if I'd been having a seizure or something similar, and made me feel safe again, we started talking.  She told me that she'd been woken up by me screaming and that when she tried to calm me down and get me back to bed, I had yelled and sworn at her, and that she'd never seen me so angry.

I couldn't articulate it very well then or now, but I'd been caught somewhere between dreaming and being awake, where something nameless I fear was in bed, and I couldn't believe that Amanda been trying to induce me to stop running from it.  It was like I felt she'd betrayed me, or that she just didn't understand the danger I was in.

Was my fear a stand-in for something less tangible?  Was it my subconscious mind giving physical form to a fear of losing Amanda, or that somehow I don't deserve her?  I don't know.

So here I at 4:55am, nearly an hour later, sitting on Amanda's couch with the lights on, my knitting project and origami paper -- comforting things -- nearby.  After Amanda calmed me down and I went to the washroom to compose myself again, I did return to bed with her.  She'd already fallen back asleep (for which I'm grateful -- I'm hoping it meant she wasn't still worrying about me), and I turned out the light and tried to join her.

I couldn't.  I honestly tried to return to sleep but my mind was whirling.  It could've been the caffeine I had earlier in the evening, but my thoughts kept wandering to old arguments with random people.  It could be that I just have trouble letting issues like that go, but I think it's more likely that part of me just didn't want to return to sleep -- didn't want to return to dreamland where I'd be at the mercy of the nightmare again.

...such is the power of a bad dream.

I know this isn't the sort of thing you come here to read, folks.  It's certainly not what I intended this blog to be about.  But even after talking with Amanda I needed to sort through it further and get it out somehow.

Thanks for listening.

Later on today I should be on here again with an upbeat post about kissing Amanda somewhere, and you'll be back to your regularly scheduled programming.