Blog One – Nocturnal Disturbances

Cinderella once sang, “A dream is a wish your heart makes…when you’re fast asleep.” Although she sang it quite eloquently, based on the dreams I have been having lately, I have to disagree. I am rarely able to indulge in a dreamless sleep (and I am partly convinced that it is because of this that I wake up exhausted). I envy people who call dreams treats that occur every so often. Lately, I call them plagues. So I thought that blogging about them might help. Writing is, after all, supposed to be therapeutic. What I am also going for is practice. I want to practice writing as a conversation. Lopate's introduction talks about using common conversation when writing personal essays so I think that using this small personal experience to start with will be good practice. I have never told anyone about a dream in writing. I'm going to give it a try and see how it goes.

The other night, as I climbed into bed, I had a terrible headache. Was it sinus or tension…I really could not tell because I had been battling both. I really do not remember what else I thought about as I drifted off to sleep. The next thing I remember is what is happening in my dream (although, at the time, I did not know it was a dream). My dream begins…

I am visiting the doctor because I was not feeling well the night before. The nurse comes to the waiting room and calls my name, but something is different – she has a wheelchair. She explains that this is a new procedure. They are now required to wheel all patients to the examining room. Why would I question that? I obediently sit in the wheelchair – when all of a sudden my arms are handcuffed to the chair! I start to struggle and ask what is going on as she continues to wheel me to a room. We enter the room and it is a bedroom decorated in a pale yellow color. I don’t remember if she tells me or if I just know that I am in an insane asylum, but I start screaming and struggling to be let loose. Suddenly, I am no longer in the chair but now in the bed and I have those thick leather arm restraints on. I am still screaming and so scared. I keep thinking that I never told anyone that I was going to see the doctor so no one will know where to look for me. I just keep screaming, “Please let me go! I don’t belong here! Somebody help me! Please! Help me!” No one comes. The nurse just walks by and stares at me. I remember thinking that I need to find a way to break the bones in one of my hands so that I can pull it out of the restraint but I have no idea how to do that.

I have a faint memory of a possible rescue at the end of the dream but it is not vivid enough to know if was really going to happen. Nothing is as vivid as my screams and terror. I woke up out of breath and sweating…thankful to be home and in my bed…thankful that it was just a dream. But you know, these days I am not really thankful for dreams – not dreams like that one anyway.