It's Not a Nightmare; It's Something Far Worse

I was thinking about this in the shower today, and it occurred to me that I could blog about it.

"Ha," I said to myself. "Nope."

And that's when I realized that posting about this felt like ACTUAL vulnerability. Not the transparency and openness I use so often on this blog, but actual vulnerability. As in, this will allow people to take educated guesses about my insecurities and fears.

I'm sweating XD

And it's funny because when I get into it, you're for sure gonna be disappointed. It's not even a big deal. Like this intro is going to feel like clickbait when I get to the point, even though I'm not lying or exaggerating the way it makes me feel. It feels vulnerable to post about this.

*clears throat and begins the post the way it came to her in the shower*

Do you have any recurring nightmares, or themes in your nightmares?

I have two in particular that stand out to me: 1) tidal waves and 2) not being able to scream.

People who know me well know that I am big into dreams. I have dream dictionaries, I love Bible stories about dreams, I recorded my dreams in a folder on my computer for years, and I ask a handful of people pretty regularly if they've dreamed. (If you're not in the handful, this is your open, standing invitation to tell me your dreams. Believe me, I want to know.)

I've had all the standard dreams/nightmares: misshapen/missing teeth, being in a runaway car, showing up places naked, ummm...what are the other common ones... I don't know. Those. I've had those, many times as well.

But the tidal and the not being able to scream...those hit me different.

~Tidal Waves~
There's...nothing you can do about a tidal wave, or a guess "tsunami" is more accurate. You're standing on the beach, and suddenly, there's a wall of dark water rising up in front of you. It swells higher and higher, and absorbs all the sounds in the world as creation holds its breath, waiting for the inevitable. It's a gasp with no more breathing. It's the period at the end of everything.

It's that jolt of adrenaline. The sinking in your chest and stomach. The way your soul goes dark.

I think it's the inevitability of a tidal wave. There's no running. There's no swimming. There's no diving through it to the other side. You're frozen, and it doesn't matter. Even if you weren't frozen, what could you do? Nothing. It's a crushing wall of death.

Tidal wave dreams aren't nightmares to me. I actually love nightmares. I find them exciting and dangerous and they show me my true colors and buried reactions in new ways.

Tidal wave dreams are like something turning off the light in my soul. They reach up and yank the cord on my soul lamp, and click. Everything winks out. That's it.

I don't like that.

Oh, and the wave never crests in my dream. The photo for this post is misleading, but it's also pretty and teal. The waves in my dreams are just impending walls of water and then...well, you know how dreams are.

~Can't Scream~
The theme of not being able to scream recurs too. Sometimes it's that I can't get my mouth open (Think Neo in The Matrix), but more often it's that my voice is hoarse. I am screaming, funneling the energy of every cell in my body into the act of making sound, but a weak little croak comes out. I bend my whole body into the scream, hands on my knees if I can, throwing my chest into the scream, but it's a fragile whisper of an exclamation.

No one can hear it, and anyone who does, doesn't understand the depth of it, because it just sounds like a little croak. It doesn't sound like someone urgently screaming for her life because something is about to destroy her. It sounds ignorable. It sounds minor. It doesn't sound like every cell of her being is crying out, like her chest is about to cleave in half with the effort.

And, as with the wave, there's nothing else to be done. I've done the one thing I can do in whatever the dire situation is—it's always a last resort in the dreams—and that fails too. No one can hear me, and those that can, don't get it.

I get what the dreams mean. I told you, I have the dream dictionaries XD I know I'm overwhelmed by life and feel like no one can support me. Conversely, I know that I can handle all things with God and the people who love me, and I know that there are DOZENS of people who love and support me. I get it.

There's really nothing left to say, and the things other people could or would say, are the reasons I'm hesitant to post this in the first place.

As always, do with all of this whatever you will.

So. Did you dream last night?

~Stephanie