Dream a little dream......and be haunted all day

Dreams are such funny things.  They can take you to a magical, faraway place or the most terrifying dark places that you can't even imagine in your waking hours.  They can take you back to a time, a memory, a fear you thought you'd conquered and just like that, you're shivering, crying or shaking when you wake up.  At least that's the way MY dreams work.  I use the term dream but really most of mine are nightmares. My husband finds it sad that while he dreams he's in episodes of his favorite shows, he's a sports star, or able to actually control the outcome of his dreams, mine are very dark, very twisted and very terrifying.  Only occasionally do I dream a nice dream.  And by nice, I mean that I dream of my deceased grandma and pap and wake up feeling a sense of love and warmth by their visit.  So, still not light and fluffy. 

Of course, we know the reason for the nightmares.  I lived through a real nightmare many years ago and no matter how long I live a stable, normal life, my dreams won't let me forget.  Makes me wonder how very little of our minds we actually use and/or know how to control.  If I could, I would suppress all those memories into tiny specks and force my mind to send them spiraling down a black hole.  But sadly, the mind is too powerful for my weak self to control. 

In them, I'm either being chased, hunted, staring down the barrel of a gun or on the total flip side, I am being a naive sheep lured in by the big, bad wolf, wanting to be close and love the enemy.  Of course, even in my dreams, I know this is wrong.  That he is the bad guy.  But somewhere deep down, my heart wants to forgive.  And also I think it's hard for a heart to accept that someone that you thought loved you, could do such terrible, terrible things to you.  You find yourself always trying to rationalize things.

An art therapist once told me to keep a notebook by my bed and when I woke from one, sketch out or write all my memories of them down.  It seemed therapeutic for a while.  However, whenever I've come across this notebook years later, reading about the dreams makes me relive them again.  And I'd really rather not.

So, until we discover a way to turn our mind off at night or I learn how to control the outcome of dreams, I will be continually haunted by things that happened more than 14 years ago and be faced with reliving these things over and over.  Luckily, instead of almost every night, they are happening less frequently, maybe once per month.  Maybe in another 20 years, I'll only have one per year.  That's at least something to look forward to.  :)