Nightmares have been a part of my life ever since I was old enough to remember them. I used to have to sleep with my ceiling light on when I was really little but even that didn’t help in the beginning, I still stared into my ceiling at night, too afraid to look into the dark corners of my room….

My mom took me to the doctors, noticing that I never really slept, and they figured it was normal. They told my mom to buy a night light. That night light never worked, I would scream for my ceiling light. The compromise was a lamp…. that I had until I was at least 12….

My dreams were vivid, they were incredibly disturbing. Some repeated themselves, some were gross. Some attacked the very thing I was scared of most.
One thing you can’t do in dream is turn the lights on… and I used to be terrified of the dark. I would run around a house with dimming lights trying to turn them back on with no luck…

Sometimes I’d be half awake and see figures at my door. I knew I was dreaming, but he would sputter the worst things at me. I would be petrified.

A reoccurring theme was animals being against me. Like they would hijack me in a car, come in the shower… or even steal my family and put them on a moving sidewalk into a shredder because I was hunting them…

Another reoccurring one would be to drive up an incredibly steep hill (Which I hate doing now, haha) and getting to this beautiful water. Which would turn into a disgusting marsh that had alligators, body parts, garbege… etc.

Sometimes I would get lost somewhere grassy, and it would get dark. Sometimes I would be in the middle of a school yard with just tights on. Sometimes my family members would kidnap me or have injury to them.

One thing that also happens is that I quasi-wake up and still affected by the dream. One dream I had,I was in a house, but my dad was a murderer and he hid body parts in the wall of the house. I was haunted by a ghost, and was trying to stay by the light… and eventually went to bed. In my bed was a head… and I woke up smelling this decaying head. The hairs on my neck stuck up and I had a terrible headache. I had to lay there to work up the courage to get a glass of water and ibuprofen.

These are only a few examples, I’m sure I’ve had worse and many other dreams. It’s just that it’s not something that has gone away with my age. It has kept with me. It’s easier to deal with, but still.
I get it that it might be a sign of my body in distress while sleeping… but there’s only a few things I’ve figured out.

• I can’t be too warm in bed
• I can’t have certain things to eat before bed(like steak… lemon pit makes FABULOUS dreams!)
• Perfumes, incense, anything with a scent will give me bad dreams
• Horror movies… that’s a given, though, lol
• Gravol or other medications. I say gravol especially if my body wants to throw up… 
• Thinking about bad stuff before bed.
• Too much water before bed

These things I always try to avoid, but sometimes it just happens out of no where and it completely ruins my sleep. The other day I had a horrible dream about my mother and had to hug her when she woke. (Of course I woke at like, 6….)