I do not hate my nightmares for their ability to leave me with heart pounding and fear coursing through my veins at 3 in the morning. No, it's a nightmare's job to do that sort of thing and I won't blame a dream for doing its job well.
The reason I hate my nightmares is that they've committed the unforgivable sin of being boring. I can have dreams of nuclear war with amazing special effects and it will not be nightmarish; dreams of spectacular death and destruction leave me unfazed; dreams of my whole world falling apart just remind me of real life. But nightmares? My true nightmares are pretty much all the same thing: Bad People are trying to break into the house to hurt me and I'm hiding inside. That's it. Oh, there's variation in detail--when I was a child, the Bad Guys were always shooting at me and I hid in the kitchen; later on, the Bad Guys were sometimes teenagers with grasping hands who jimmied the locks. Last night's dream only involved two men, but they looked like Jehovah's Witnesses. This dream was the first I can remember where I actually thought to call 911, though I didn't get to the phone before waking up. Maybe it's a good sign that for once in a nightmare I had hope that somebody could help me.
In other dreams, I was pleased to learn that when I find myself hanging over a deep canyon, I can run on air for short distances just like all the other cartoon characters.
The reason I hate my nightmares is that they've committed the unforgivable sin of being boring. I can have dreams of nuclear war with amazing special effects and it will not be nightmarish; dreams of spectacular death and destruction leave me unfazed; dreams of my whole world falling apart just remind me of real life. But nightmares? My true nightmares are pretty much all the same thing: Bad People are trying to break into the house to hurt me and I'm hiding inside. That's it. Oh, there's variation in detail--when I was a child, the Bad Guys were always shooting at me and I hid in the kitchen; later on, the Bad Guys were sometimes teenagers with grasping hands who jimmied the locks. Last night's dream only involved two men, but they looked like Jehovah's Witnesses. This dream was the first I can remember where I actually thought to call 911, though I didn't get to the phone before waking up. Maybe it's a good sign that for once in a nightmare I had hope that somebody could help me.
In other dreams, I was pleased to learn that when I find myself hanging over a deep canyon, I can run on air for short distances just like all the other cartoon characters.
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