Post 136: Nightmares

I'm prone to them - always have been and, I fear, always will be. And here's a little secret for you: one of the major reasons it's been hard for me to write is because my writing has a direct effect on my sleeping habit. I tend to have nightmares more frequently when I find myself writing profusely - even about good stuff. I'm serious. This is the part I am not excited about. But it is a sign that I'm doing what I'm supposed to; I just hate the side effects.

Do you want an example? K - well, I'll give you one anyway. :-) I've had two fairly bad ones but I'll only tell you one of them.

The first is about that "Lady in the Water" movie. I'm sitting in the theatre with a guy friend of mine who really wants to see it - but it's just him and I which has never happened before. We're not on a date or anything like that as far as I can tell. About 20 minutes into the movie I excuse myself to go to the bathroom but I don't. Instead, I sit in the lobby and wait for the movie to be over. I was too scared to watch the rest but even as I sit there these awful visions from the movie are still haunting me. When it's obvious that I'm not coming back in, my friend comes out to look for me. Seeing me, he asks why I left. I told him that when I said I wasn't sure if I could sit through the movie that I wasn't kidding; and then I explain to him that I'm still having these bad visions even though I'm not watching it anymore. He says that then we can just go and he really wasn't liking it anyway. Though I knew he was lying. I told him no, he should go in and finish watching it because I knew him well enough to know he was just trying to be a gentleman. But as I said that my surroundings changed and I found myself in this weird place. My friend was standing behind me breathing heavily. I seemed to recognize the place but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then my friend's voice changed to be really deep as he said, "You should run now." I turned around to see that he had morphed into this awful looking wolf-man. His fangs were already dripping with blood but I could see no evidence of him killing anything. At that moment I realized that I was in the movie. It was like I was trapped in this box where I could see the screen and I could see the people watching me in the movie as I was banging on the screen for someone to get me out of there. But all they kept doing was eating their popcorn, mesmerized by what they were watching - and they had 3D glasses. Weird.

Then my friend said, "No one can help you now. You are trapped in here so start running otherwise, this is going to be the easiest kill I've had. We need to entertain people."

"Entertain people?" I asked, pretty much frozen in place, horrified at my situtation.
"Before I kill you. This isn't a movie."

Then he lunged at me, knocked me to the ground and ripped off the skin on my face with his teeth but I was still alive. I won't go into what happened next but I died a horrible death before I woke up breathing hard and turned my light on very quickly. It took me awile to turn my life off and to try to go back to sleep. This is the third or fourth night of nightmares.

I am not joking when I say that there are days I wish someone would spend just 24 hours in my head. It really isn't easy many days to be me. It's not that I don't have things and friends and family that care about me but I have this head that is constantly moving, thinking and keeping me on edge that I don't truly know what peace or quiet is - even when I'm desperate for it or am trying to clear my head. I haven't had nightmares this bad in awhile - ever since 8 years ago when I seriously put down my pen because what I wrote scared me so I swore off writing ever again.

This is why I say my imagination is a blessing AND a curse. It doesn't just come with great stories; it comes with stories that freak me out - and my head is the one that conjures them up. I scare MYSELF half the time. I so don't need a movie or a trailer of a movie to do it for me. It's why I'm so sensitive when it comes to some movies and stuff.

I know that the evil one is using a gift God has given me to try to stop me from pursuing God's will. I have to fight it like I've never fought it before. I know there may be worse nights to come but I am going to be ready for them - even if I have to sleep with a nightlight and stop watching TV completely. I haven't watch more than an hour of TV in the last five days. Still, I have nightmares. I just have to be careful, keep writing, don't give up and pray very seriously about this.

I'm not sure if I tell any of my friends about this yet. I know that a few do read my blog so they'll know. But I don't know if I should give this wings or not yet. If I do, maybe I'm playing into the evil one's hands. I think I'm going to leave it up to God if I should have people pray about this for me yet. It has only been a few days and that could be becasue of my hormones - though I hightly doubt that this is why since I don't usually have nightmares when I'm hormonal. But I'm kind of hoping that that's the reason.

The other thing is that my nightmares take awhile to end even when I wake up from them. I've had several instances through childhood and early adulthood of hallucinating after having a nightmare. Most of the time, turning on the light makes it go away - but not always. And that's the scary truth. I have to pray very quickly and out loud sometimes to make it go away. But since I haven't had these for so long and so infrequently since I quit writing seriously eight years ago, I know that they have to be back because I'm serious again about writing. I've always hinted to people about this tendency with my writing but I've never gone in depth with it to them. But the person I've become now won't allow me to hide it for too much longer. I'm just not able to keep things like this to myself anymore. It's too hard.

But I don't want to send out an e-mail yet. I think I'm going to let those who read this pray for me if they want and then tell a few of my close friends about it. I really think I'm being attacked again. On the other hand, I know that it's a sign that God wants to use this gift of mine in a way that the evil one so does not want to happen. And that is inspiring. :-)