Nightmares
I've always been prone to nightmares. During the last year, they've become constant--every night, the same theme.
I'm visiting my mom, or I'm back at PCC, the cult-like school I went to for eighteen months. For some reason, I'm stuck there. Maybe Mom won't let me leave. Maybe I don't have the money for a bus ticket back to my apartment. Maybe I know I won't have food or clothing or a place to go if I leave. Maybe Mom has taken my furniture and told my landlord to cancel the lease, and someone else has moved in. Maybe I'm just expected to stay and I can't figure out how to leave. People try to control my life--tell me what to eat, what to wear, when to sleep. I'm not allowed to read or learn or use a computer. I'm not allowed to take care of my cats--maybe they've been left somewhere and I can't find them, or Mom has decided to let them roam outdoors where it's dangerous, or just dropped them off at the shelter. I keep looking for a way out. Sometimes there's no door. I've lost my independence. My stepfather has moved back in. Sometimes he's hurting my family and I can't stop him.
Usually, I'm a rather proficient lucid dreamer. I can take control of dreams. If there's a monster chasing me, I usually figure out that this isn't real, ignore the monster, and go do something else. But these nightmares are so beguiling. They're so mundane. Nothing about them prompts me to reality-check, except that sometimes I know, dimly, that I don't live with my mom anymore, that I have a place of my own now, that I can make my own decisions. So I try to leave. And always, always I'm prevented from leaving, and eventually I lose the scrap of lucidity I had.
I used to be able to deal with my nightmares very easily. By the time I was a teenager, I knew how to wake myself up whenever I wanted. I learned how to fly, how to teleport from one place to another, how to create objects. I can throw fireballs, move things by thinking about them. In my dreams, I have superpowers. If I can move something without touching it, I know it's a dream. I used to wake up from a nightmare, heart pounding, and think to myself, "Darn it. Well, back to sleep." And I'd go back to sleep. It was an annoyance, no more.
But nowadays, I'm reluctant to go to sleep, because always, sooner or later, I find myself in some situation where I'm trapped, I've lost my independence, and other people are making my decisions for me. It's frustrating and it certainly doesn't take Freud to analyze why it's happening.
I'm scared, scared to death, of not being able to direct my own life. I'm scared that someone will decide that I'm not competent. I'm scared that I won't make it, and I'll be stuck always being a second-class citizen, treated like a child, without respect. And I can't help thinking about all those people who will always need to live with someone who can help them--from profoundly autistic people to elderly nursing home residents--and thinking that it's so, so unfair that just because a person needs help from others, he loses control of his own life. It's as though the more other people do for you, the more they feel they have a right to dictate what you do. Even the smallest amount of help seems to come with stipulations: "Do this thing, this way, at this time." And you have to be thankful, because without that help you couldn't live at all.
It's really no wonder I have nightmares.
I'm visiting my mom, or I'm back at PCC, the cult-like school I went to for eighteen months. For some reason, I'm stuck there. Maybe Mom won't let me leave. Maybe I don't have the money for a bus ticket back to my apartment. Maybe I know I won't have food or clothing or a place to go if I leave. Maybe Mom has taken my furniture and told my landlord to cancel the lease, and someone else has moved in. Maybe I'm just expected to stay and I can't figure out how to leave. People try to control my life--tell me what to eat, what to wear, when to sleep. I'm not allowed to read or learn or use a computer. I'm not allowed to take care of my cats--maybe they've been left somewhere and I can't find them, or Mom has decided to let them roam outdoors where it's dangerous, or just dropped them off at the shelter. I keep looking for a way out. Sometimes there's no door. I've lost my independence. My stepfather has moved back in. Sometimes he's hurting my family and I can't stop him.
Usually, I'm a rather proficient lucid dreamer. I can take control of dreams. If there's a monster chasing me, I usually figure out that this isn't real, ignore the monster, and go do something else. But these nightmares are so beguiling. They're so mundane. Nothing about them prompts me to reality-check, except that sometimes I know, dimly, that I don't live with my mom anymore, that I have a place of my own now, that I can make my own decisions. So I try to leave. And always, always I'm prevented from leaving, and eventually I lose the scrap of lucidity I had.
I used to be able to deal with my nightmares very easily. By the time I was a teenager, I knew how to wake myself up whenever I wanted. I learned how to fly, how to teleport from one place to another, how to create objects. I can throw fireballs, move things by thinking about them. In my dreams, I have superpowers. If I can move something without touching it, I know it's a dream. I used to wake up from a nightmare, heart pounding, and think to myself, "Darn it. Well, back to sleep." And I'd go back to sleep. It was an annoyance, no more.
But nowadays, I'm reluctant to go to sleep, because always, sooner or later, I find myself in some situation where I'm trapped, I've lost my independence, and other people are making my decisions for me. It's frustrating and it certainly doesn't take Freud to analyze why it's happening.
I'm scared, scared to death, of not being able to direct my own life. I'm scared that someone will decide that I'm not competent. I'm scared that I won't make it, and I'll be stuck always being a second-class citizen, treated like a child, without respect. And I can't help thinking about all those people who will always need to live with someone who can help them--from profoundly autistic people to elderly nursing home residents--and thinking that it's so, so unfair that just because a person needs help from others, he loses control of his own life. It's as though the more other people do for you, the more they feel they have a right to dictate what you do. Even the smallest amount of help seems to come with stipulations: "Do this thing, this way, at this time." And you have to be thankful, because without that help you couldn't live at all.
It's really no wonder I have nightmares.