My Dreams Are Trying to Kill Me

…and it’s rude.

Seriously, I am completely sick and tired (pun!) of all the ways in which my dreams cheat and attempt to give me more nightmares. It’s bad enough that I have bad dreams several times during the week. This conspiracy to turn them into nightmares is worse.

Oh, what’s that? You didn’t know there was a difference between a bad dream and a nightmare? You probably don’t even have nightmares, do you? Freaking lucky SOB.

The difference between a bad dream and a nightmare is normally defined by whether or not the dream forces you to wake up. Since I wake up randomly throughout the night regardless it’s a little hard for me to define the difference between what was “natural” and what was in the middle of a REM cycle, so I apply my own definition. If I wake up screaming or crying or with my heart racing and still very afraid, I consider it a nightmare. If I wake up calm, even if bad things were happening in the dream, I just consider it bad.

I don’t particularly like either type of dream because the worst thing is, I have the very unfortunate habit of falling back into the same dream when I go back to sleep. If this happens, it’s also very common for it to go from a bad dream to a nightmare because my dreams F*CKING CHEAT.

If I woke up calm because I had managed to hide from whatever was attempting to kill me, you can guarantee that when I fall back asleep my hiding place is discovered. If I had the situation under control because I had a weapon, it no longer works or changes into something else. I remember one zombie dream that infuriated me later because I had a gun, I had a safe area in sight, but all of the zombies had STEEL PLATES IN THEIR HEAD AND COULDN’T BE SHOT. WTF!?! HOW IS THAT FAIR!?!

Last night I had a total of 5 bad dreams/nightmares. 5. **5**. This is excessive. I even stayed awake from around 3 am to 5 because I absolutely knew I was going to be trapped in the same zombie dream and I didn’t want that to happen. Finally, I fell asleep and had another nightmare about being trapped in my car after it flipped. Woke up panicked, forgot to try and think about non-zombie things to trick my mind, fell back asleep, and sure enough had more zombie issues.

Logically bad dreams shouldn’t be a big deal. Keep in mind though that it is possible to die in your dreams, and I’m one of those “lucky” individuals that dies quite often. I mean sure, that doesn’t really kill me, but neither is it pleasant. And again, I have the habit of continuously falling back into the same dream. So I get to be murdered not once, but sometimes multiple times.

Let’s just say too that I decide to stay awake. This is the obvious answer to win the game when your dreams cheat. Good plan, except I’m also blessed with a constitution that responds to things like not sleeping enough with violent nausea. I know, I know, being me is such a joy.

The good news is I have stumbled upon a possible solution. You see, I’ve finally realized that I have the most nightmares on the nights when I take my contacts out (and that just adds to the bundle of fun, because now I get to wake up screaming and be completely unable to see, yay!!!). Most likely it’s because I have a deep fear that if I’m ever attacked, it will be while I’m somewhat blind and more vulnerable. Years of watching Scooby Doo as a child have warped my brain. I try to leave in my contacts as much as possible to help with this, but I decided a month or two ago that maybe this should be the year I actually get eye surgery.  Then I reconsidered, because I feel like they don’t let you drive yourself home from eye surgery and I hate cabs, but after my doozy of a night I’m leaning towards it once more.

Plus I suppose the bright side of having nightmares more often than not is that it gives me writing fuel. If I wrote happy, sappy, love stories good dreams would probably be more effective, but as it is I like to write things where I need to tap into feelings of terror or hopelessness. Done and done.