The bastard brother of dreams

I don't sleep easily. Never really have.

I've always been prone to nightmares, some particular ones that have kept popping up since I was 4 years old or so.

Bear in mind, this is not based on scientific knowledge, merely my perception of it, but it does seem to hold up reasonably.

When a child is born, their entire world is themselves, and whatever's within earshot of them. They do not percieve the world outside their immediate sphere, because they are not aware of it, nor capable of understanding it. Thus, irrelevant. And while an infant may feel an immediate fear of being alone, they don't realize fear as such. Barring abandoned babies, I doubt any recently-born will ever feel lost for longer than it takes for a parent to scoop it up and hold it.

I don't think babies have nightmares, because they haven't developed their worldview enough to understand exactly how much there is to be afraid of.

When a child grows up, it starts sensing the world around it. And slowly, it dawns, that while the world is a gargantuan playground to frolick in, it's also a vast expanse of indifference toward the child. The world persists, regardless of the child. One is no longer the focal point of existance everywhere.
This is where the nightmares kick in, I reckon. The slow coming to terms with existance as we define it is scaring. The wondrous, but ultimately simple, mind of a child cannot accept, immediately, the fact that the world simply doesn't care. Yet the child is left to come to terms with it by its own accord.

Everyone who dreams (and I believe most everyone do, remembering them is another matter entirely) experiences nightmares. It's inevitable that at some point, your mind walks down a dead-end path, and gets trapped by its own (lack of) logic.
Everyone have had nightmares where they are chased by something. An image, a thought, a monster or just the feeling of something hot on your heels, lurking around the corner.

And I have no doubt that if I were to ask any child at the age of 4, if they'd ever had a nightmare about being alone or abandoned, they'd nod in agreement.

As a child grows older, they learn to cope with their existance. Their lives again turn back into a microcosmos of expectations, goals, dreams and whatnot. In short, turning back to egoism because it offers a measure of solace. Facing the world's whimsical cruelty with no means of comprehending it simply will not work. And usually, there, the nightmares stop again for children, and don't resurface unless some traumatic event triggers them again.

The next time nightmares start showing up on a significant scale, I surmise, is during adolescence, where we once again dip our feet into the world outside. Taking in external impressions to help shape ourselves and define ourselves also means seeing what the other side of life is about. And the dreams return. They'll fade, bit by bit while puberty has its way with you and you're too busy making any sense of it all, and honestly I don't think nightmares really resurface until you step out of teenagehood and into the ranks of adults. When, once again, you're forced out of the microcosmos because it's expected that you're now an upstanding citizen who'll help maintain the world.

From then on, you're alone with your nightmares, because you're expected to be able to handle them, and the cause of them, by virtue of adulthood alone.

I guess I missed the memo about nightmares stopping at the age of around 8.

And that's the reason for why I'm writing this, because that's one of the ways I have learned to combat it.

Until I was 18, I never talked to anyone about my nightmares, because of the dreams themselves. One of them in particular, as it's been the most consistent of them. It's changed along the years, but in essence it's the same.

In my dream, I am standing in front of a wall. I'm not standing on anything, more like floating in nothingness. The wall stretches unendingly in front of me, the way things can in dreams. I begin to realize that the wall, in some way, is my doing, and while it's never clearly defined for me, I sense that I've built it for a reason.
That's when I turn to look over my shoulder, where I see people. My mother, father, my brother, my friends and those I love or have loved.
None of them say a word, they just look at me, waiting. Blank eyes and taut faces, I never see them move.
I get a sense of restlessness, that turns to worry. They aren't waiting for me to do something, they are waiting, hoping for me to prevent something from happening.

And that's when I realize that I am not awake. Some people enjoy, when dreaming, the realization they are free. Free from rules and regulations, they can do as they will.
I become fearful when I realize I am dreaming, because the comprehension brings with it the thought that I no longer have a measure of control over things around me. That the laws don't apply, that I can take nothing for granted. That I am a subject to the whims of my own subconscience.
And in the dream, I realize that I am standing on the safe side of dreaming. The strange, the wonderful, the mysterious and enticing dreams...and that on the other side of the wall, are the things I fear. The green-eyed wolf made of shadows and angles from another nightmare, the dust-yellow fog that rolls over the hillside in the twilight, The gmork from the Neverending story, the demon in my plush teddybear that causes it to try and savage my throat with jagged teeth. They're all there, on the other side of the wall, waiting to come through.
Then I notice a crack in the wall, that starts expanding into a fine network of shadows.
I put my hands against the wall, trying to hold it in place, hold it together, while I sense the people behind me, silenty staring, and waiting, and hoping. Without blinking, moving, they depend on me to hold this in.

The wall comes crumbling down, I can't keep it together, and from the holes in the wall, shadows flow like a flood into my dream, darkness and teeth and green eyes wash over me, and the last thing I see is the wave roll over all I know and love, swallowing it up. Because I couldn't hold it back.

The people in the dream vary, as real life changes and people part ways, but most everyone I've met from age 18 and onwards stay there.

I don't remember the first time I dreamt this, it's lost somewhere in the early years, but for the longest of times, I didn't tell anyone about the dream, because I remembered the dream and what happened in it. I was afraid that if I told anyone about it, the floodgates would open again, just in reality instead of in my dreams.

I spent years, fearing that what I hid of dark thoughts would one day, if unchecked, flow from me and swallow up everyone I knew.

So I kept it to myself, and in return, it did not spill out.

I write about it now, as I have written on it a few times in the past, to once again try and get some measure of closure to it. By writing it, or saying it, I feel I diminish its power a little, every time, and its hold over me weakens enough for me to breathe normally again.

Unfortunately, I've done it before, and I know, that like an unkillable infection, I can only drain it down to a tolerable level, and keep it there. Eventually, I'll forget about it for a while, and it will come back.

I wonder how this came to happen. What caused me to dream that my own mind would flow through me and bury everyone I know, what kind of nightmare is that? Why would I end up fearing, for over a decade, that I was a conduit for nightmares. What the fuck caused this? It's not normal, I'm fairly certain of that.

At least, for a while now, I can breathe again, with it removed from the back of my mind.

As to the why of me writing about it now?

Simple. I dreamt it again last night. There's a reason for why I usually sleep with the lights on, when I sleep alone. As soon as I wake up, and realize I'm awake, catch my breath and the heart stops pounding like it's trying to escape my chest, I end up cursing my mind, that it won't stop thinking, because awake and asleep, I keep thinking myself into dead-ends.