Dreams, and reflection

I had a werewolf dream again in the wee hours of this morning.

This time the werewolf was lurking inside when I unlocked the door to my house.  I was expecting my boyfriend (in the dream - no their isn't one) to be hiding in the house in the dark to teach me a lesson about security and being prepared; instead a werewolf in 1/2 human 1/2 wolf form lept from the shadows and started gnawing on my left rib cage ... where my wolf paw tattoo is ... and where my heart is.  I froze, and remember trying to scream, but not being able to.

Then, of course, I woke up.

I lay there, trying to regain control of my breathing, in that strange mental state of clarity you get before infected with the goings on of the world, and recalled that the dream dictionary says that dreaming of werewolves often indicates that someone in your life isn't who they appear to be.

Then, with shocking clarity, the thought shot across my brain:

What if the someone is me?

Nightmares need to be earned?

At the training I was at last week, after dinner a few of us would walk out to a little island that was part of the base, and chat.  Due to the nature of the training, and the fact we knew we had, to some degree, a common foundation, we were fairly open in our conversations.  I had a few really good conversations with one vet in particular about nightmares, and more will show up here later on some of the things he made me think about.

One of the walks was just three of us.  The vet I just mentioned, myself, and another peer who was also on the "family" side, like me.  The nightmare conversation was getting going pretty good.  We weren't going into any details about imagery, but we were discussing intensity, dream hangovers, and general strategies.

  During a lull in the chat, the other family volunteer looked at me and said "Wait - were you in the military yourself?"  I replied that I wasn't, and then she said "Well, what do you mean you have nightmares?"  She honestly seemed confused by the fact that I could have nightmares without actually having served.

I was confused because I thought (and still think) everyone has nightmares.  Maybe not too the "night terror" level, or even intense nightmares, but most people have them. 

I find it really odd that someone would question, almost to the point of challenging me, on the "truth" of having nightmares without having served.

An aside, from WebMD: "While it's true nightmares are more common among children, one out of every two adults has nightmares on occasion. And between 2% and 8% of the adult population is plagued by nightmares" 

Tuesday Morning's Nightmare ...

I am having nightmares again (still?).  They are not full blown night terrors, I have had those, the ones that leave you unable to talk, to think, to move, to function.  The ones that leave you locked in their grip long after someone tries to wake you, long after you finally wake.  The ones that leave you looking at yourself in a detached way like a third person, knowing at the end it is a dream, but unable to get out of it.  This is not those sorts of terrors, but they are strong nightmares, none the less.

And they are getting weirder. 

The ones I’d been having, with the random male presence somewhere that he shouldn’t be, make some sense given my background and some of the more memorable experiences in my life.

Last night, I dreamt of battle.

I have never been in an actual battle, nor have either of my guys ever gone into graphic detail with me, not regarding a specific battle, and certainly not anything like this. There would be random details, but never a play by play. A comrade of the Wolf’s once related to me an incident from Croatia involving the “bad guys” using innocents as shields, but only the barest of detail; detatched, clinical, and just the facts, ma'am; and again, nothing like the dream I had.

I have not been watching TV, or movies, nor reading books that are anywhere near this sort of theme.  Nothing related to battle, or war.

I have no idea where this one came from.  It felt so real, so vivid, and when I woke up my skin was crawling, and it took a while to steel myself enough to get up for a drink of water and a bathroom break.  I didn’t want to move.  I certainly didn’t want to leave the safety of my bed. 

All I know is that I had to get up in the middle of the night and make notes so I could remember, and I *need* to write it down here, to share it, and to get it out of my head.

This is a long one, so if you want to skip over the actual dream, feel free.

This one started innocently enough.  I was driving, with others in the car, to some kind of community celebration.  It was evening, before twilight, and there were older women in the car with me – maybe my mom, and others? I don’t remember that part.  I remember parking the vehicle, some kind of jeep, and them trying to get out before I was actually parked, and me being cross with them for it. 

There is a bit missing then, and all of a sudden I am in a house, a traditional desert type dwelling, clay or some such, very square, and only openings for doors and windows, no glass, or doors.  Whether it once had them and now they are gone, or if they never existed, I can’t say.  The home seems to have been abandoned; there are no signs of inhabitants.  We have been tasked to watch; for what I don’t know.  There are two others with me.  One is a former supervisor, from a job I left years ago.  I never get a good sense of who the third is, only that it is male, and he is part of the team.

We are armed with machine guns, something automatic with a font grip; I don’t know much about automatic weapons.  It was not a C-6 (FN MAG) or MP-5, both of which I have actually used at ranges.  Something, from a quick Google images search, more like a Colt AR-15, which I swear I have never held in my hands.

My former supervisor was not taking her task nor the firearm seriously at all; she was goofing around, not aware of her surroundings, and not aware of her muzzle control at all.  (This may translate to the fact that in real life, many years ago, she failed to take some concerns seriously, failed to have my back, and let me down in a big way). 

In the dream, she was outside one of the window openings, pointing the muzzle of the weapon directly at me.  I was about to give her crap, when a figure appeared around the edge of the door opening.

I raised my weapon and fired a short burst, realizing as I did so the figure was wearing body armour, and a face shield that also was impervious to bullets.  The face shield is frozen forever in my memory, as it was painted in a replica of a gaunt human skull. 

In the dream time was in slow motion, giving me time to fixate on the horror of the skull mask, its ability to withstand bullets; to realize that the figure’s throat was exposed, and to re-orient my weapon to fire a burst into that exposed throat, thus removing him from the equation.

As I look out past the one threat that has now been neutralized, I realize that there are more of them out there, in the clusters of trees that dot the barren landscape.  But they are intermingled with the people from the celebration I was at earlier, and while we try, it is hard to get clear shots without also endangering the innocent.

Then more innocents start to file around the house in a steady stream from behind, like a stream of ants surrounding a crumb; walking as if on remote control, no emotion, no resistance or fear evident on their faces.  I feel trapped, and unable to fire without endangering the innocents, knowing that the bad guys don’t have the same reluctance. 

The bad guys also had some sort of incendiary grenade, something that made and incredibly bright light, and vaporized people.  They were using the grenades in the clusters of innocents, and using the resluting smoke clouds, and our temporary blindness, as cover.  All was lost ... 

And then I woke up.  My skin was crawling.  I was clammy….. I knew I was in my own bed, in my own room, safe, but somehow I still felt trapped, wild, defeated.  I eventually calmed down, got a drink as I said, and tried to return to sleep … but as soon as I tried to close my eyes, the skull masked figure was back … creeping through my kitchen, peeking around the edge of my bedroom door, waiting until I let my guard down.

I got up again, wrote down the details of the dream in quick form, hoping to trap the sleep demons with words, so I could sleep again.  It worked, sort of, and I drifted into a fitful sleep for the rest of the night,

I can still see that skull mask peeking around the edge of the door of that abandoned building, as vividly as if it were in front of me.  I can still, 12 hours later and in broad day light, recall the sights, the sounds, the feelings.

Is this the beginning of a descent into madness?  Am I sharing memories with the Wolf that were never expressed?

Or do I just need to pay more attention to what I eat in the evenings? 

All I know for sure is this can’t go on – I need some sleep.

Werewolves and nightmares

By the time I got to bed Thursday night, I had been awake for roughly 42 hours straight.  Of course, I was completely wired by the sleep deprivation  and the testing (which I can describe later - I need to purge this out of my head first).  I wasn't sure I was going to be able to sleep after all that, so I popped a couple of melatonin tablets (an herbal sleep aid which I have used before).

I laid down around 2300, and even then it took until into early Friday morning to actually fall asleep.  When I did finally make it to sleep, it was a restless sleep, punctuated by dreams.  Nightmares, actually.  The kind of nightmares that linger on after you are awake, even though you *know* they aren't real, you find yourself looking around, turning on lights, with a hovering sense on unease.  A day and a bit later, (and well rested) I still can't completely shake it.

Usually, when I have a nightmare, I can roll over to my other side and the dreams will either banish, or switch to pleasant ones.  Not this one.  I rolled over - the dream came back.  I got up for some water and a pee - the dream came back.  Every time I closed my eyes and started to drift off, the dream came back.

I don't remember every detail, but I remember parts vividly.  I know I was in a bar, not a bar I know, the typical "roadhouse" type bar you see in movies - long and low.  There was a definite reddish cast to the whole dream, and this roadhouse seemed to be in the middle of no-where (of course); a splash of red light in the middle of the dark night.

I don't recall being with anyone I knew in the dream, I was just in the bar.  There were a number of other people in the bar, and I somehow *knew* that many of them were werewolves, even though they were in human form.  Not the warm, fuzzy, socially conscious type werewolves that have been made popular in modern fiction; not they type that blend well with society and eat burgers.  No, these were the "older" type of werewolves, the kind that see humans as toys, prey, and/or food.  Werewolves with bad attitudes.

Sure enough, things went downhill, and the werewolves decided to (for lack of a better term) start a brawl.  It gets a bit fuzzy in my memory, but somehow I ended up in the vestibule of the roadhouse with three young male and really aggressive werewolves (still in human form - they never did "change").

I was fighting back, but I knew they were toying with me, and I knew I was toast.  I suddenly remembered (?) that I had a pistol with me, and silver bullets (its a dream, people.  It doesn't have to make sense).  So I pulled out my trusty pistol and put a silver bullet in the middle of the forehead of the werewolf closest to me ... who smiled, and kept coming for me.  I paniced and fired at the other two ... 

and woke up.

Woke up completely creeped out, and nervous.  Turned on the lights, looked around, tried to calm down.  Looked at the clock - 0300.

Eventually calmed down enough to try sleep again, and finally made it into a dreamless, restful sleep, until about 0630.  I hadn't set my alarm, but I don't "sleep in" well.  Made it through Friday OK, but the dream has continued to rear itself up from my sub-conscious when I am not expecting it - scenes will flash in my mind with no warning.  Went to bed last night around midnight (no melatonin) and had a dreamless sleep.  But the werewolves are still there, just under the surface.

No idea where to even start trying to figure out the symbolism on this one, what my sub-conscious is trying to tell me.  Honestly, just hoping that putting it all on paper will get it out of my head.

Thanks for listening. ♥