Tagged: nightmares
Terrors
That’s TERRORS. Not terriers. Terriers aren’t particularly terrifying, except for the ones with knives. But terrors – and specifically, night terrors – are actually bloody crapping terrifying. Innit.
The worse thing? It’s not me that’s having them. It’s my little Moo. Yep. That’s right. TWICE now, which, in my opinion is two times too many for a tiny person. Two nights this week she has woken up screaming. Proper screaming. Like I’ve not heard her scream before. Sheer desperate panic. Hideous. Nothing a parent ever wants to hear emanating from their child’s bedroom.
Of course I’m awake in a nanosecond. I’m in her room, next door to mine, in another nanosecond. I pick her up and she sobs, in my arms, for a bit. I do all my best cuddling moves. I whisper lovely stuff in her ear. I rock gently. She’s all right. She’s good. She wants to go back into her cot. That’s also good. All credit to Moo, she drops back to sleep after about twenty minutes, no problemo. Me? Nah, that’s me AWAKE TILL THE END OF TIME, then.
Jeezus.
I’ve not Googled night terrors. Me and Google don’t get on when it comes to ailments, physical or otherwise. I’ve just assumed this is what’s happening. I know Moo has had nightmares before but nothing like this. And today – after last night’s funtime scream-a-thon – she refused to nap in her cot. So by the afternoon we are both tired, grumpy, tense and needing a lot of biscuits.
She’s gone to bed this evening well enough. But I am DREADING the wee hours now. I’m exhausted enough that it’s an early night for me, but I know I won’t sleep easy, one ear constantly vigilant for the slightest shift in rhythmic breathing. And of course, of course of course, there’s FARK ALL I can do about it. If she wakes screaming, from some unknown terror she can’t formulate into words for me, then there’s bugger all I can do to prevent it. I guess I can just be there for her, if she wakes, in that nanosecond or two.
Helpless. And tired.
Has anyone else experienced this before? Themselves or their children? Should I Google? And what’s faster than a nanosecond?
Nightmare
This is what woke me up this morning.
In my dream, I was walking into the park. Like most subconscious locations, it was familiar, yet different. The trees bent upwards, fish-bowled round the grey grassy swathes, as their branches scratched each other and itched in the wind. Noise rushed past me: children shrieking, birds cracking and snapping, insects crawling. I was carrying Moo in my arms. We were headed towards the playground. We like it there. She twisted around me, giggled, her hair in my face.
From nowhere, there came teeth, and sticky fur, and a livid eyeball. This is what I recall: not a whole animal, just a whirling impression of one, though in hindsight, I think it was a dog. It was on me. It was trying to bite through me, to get to Moo. The teeth were in my arm, my shoulder. They sank into my back. No pain. Just a sensation of sliding, and gripping, within my flesh. A hopeless stinging, maybe.
But the worse thing was my baby’s fear. This is what nauseated me. In my dream, I had fallen to the ground, curled around my daughter, using my own bones as a cage for her protection. She was screaming into my eyes. Above it all, the teeth were rending my flesh apart, but it was my baby girl’s terrified wails that made me wake, sweating, heart pounding.
So I didn’t get back to sleep, though it was still early. I couldn’t manage to relax again. I’ve never heard anything like that before – the sound of sheer terror – and I farking hope I never have to. Especially not from Moo. Never, ever, from Moo.
Maybe this is why I am so low today. Nightmares suck the joy from waking hours, sometimes.
Bad Dreams are made of this
So I had TWO weird bad dreams last night. Don’t know if it was the more-than-usual interrupted sleep I had (Moo stirring every five minutes, it seemed) or the massive Easter egg I ate just before I went to bed. But they were really vivid and freaky-deaky enough to wake me each time, totally disorientated, and slightly worried about falling back asleep in case they continued.
Dream #1
Mountains, grey rocks, fir trees, cabins, snow. I was looking out of a window – it was quite high up – overlooking a road. There was a gated house opposite. The road curved sharply beneath my window. A car came along and stopped by the wall, just past the gate. A woman was on her phone in the car, she had a map. A door opened in the building below me. A massive truck began to reverse out, straight towards the car. The woman tried to start the car; the wheels span in the snow. The truck kept moving. I ended up watching the truck crush the car against the wall, the woman screaming all the while. Then the truck moved away and the gate opened. The crushed car was somehow pulled through and disappeared. I wake up feeling panicky.
Dream #2
Was lining up to take part in an indoor bungee jump. I was measured for the harness and then rejected, because apparently I didn’t fit it. So I had to watch everyone else instead. A man went first. The jump was into a ravine that went underground. At the bottom of the ravine was a deep pool. He was dunked in the pool, totally disappeared for a moment, then came springing back up (as you do in bungee jumps). Next a woman stepped forward and prepared to jump. Somehow I could follow her experience. She jumped but there was no pool in the ravine – they’d dangled her over the wrong one. Instead of springing back up, she just kept falling and falling through the dark, and it got quieter and quieter. I wake up feeling scared and unsettled.
I always remember my dreams but to be able to recall them with this much clarity almost half a day later is weird. That only happens occasionally. I’m not sure I believe that dreams ‘mean’ anything but I think I must be worried about something. Any ideas, fellow blogonauts??
