Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The nightmare...

I had a horrible nightmare on Saturday night - three days ago! - and it's still affecting my sleep.

Now this was not your typical mom nightmare, where you can't find your kid at a crowded carnival fairground, or your husband leaves you for the teenaged check-out girl at the supermarket. This was a full-blown horror movie with gore galore. So here's what happened: Hannibal Lechter was on the loose and, for some reason, it was common knowledge that he was coming for me and my family. He was way scarier than he was in The Silence of the Lambs, though - in my dream, he had superhuman strength and could do magic tricks like make locks on doors and windows disappear. And he didn't dine on people in pinky-extended nibbles, either. No, in my dream, he went berserk on his victims, leaving them short limbs and heads. The most vivid image from the dream was of a super-pale bald man who had lost the entire bottom three-quarters of his body. He had only enough torso so that he could still have arms attached, but he did somehow manage to maintain his glasses in all of the bedlam. He was hovering around on the street among the other victims, evangelizing to me that Hannibal was coming and that I, too, could lose over 100 pounds on the Dismemberment Diet! ("Actual results may vary," he disclaimed.)

Okay, so you're thinking this doesn't sound that scary, right? Well, wait 'til you hear the worst part...

I woke up from this dream gripped by an absolute terror that was so powerful I could not move a muscle for about 10-15 minutes. (Great - now I know how I'll react in an actual terrifying situation. Better sign the kids up for track so they'll be able to run themselves away from danger while mom goes catatonic in fear.) I finally calmed myself enough to reach over and grab my book light and Soap Opera Digest, which I read for an hour. The reading worked - I got so immersed in the soapy goodness that I forgot all about Hannibal and fell back asleep.

And then I was back in the same dream again.

Holy crap! I had been under the impression that this kind of thing did not happen. It's certainly what I've told my girls whenever they've woken up from a bad dream in the night. "Shhh, it's okay. That dream is all over now."

When the alarm woke me up at 6 to bring Annabelle to her Pop Warner game (yes, you read me right - I had to get up at 6 on a Sunday for my child's activity), I was actually relieved to get the hell out of bed. And the dream haunted me all day. Later that night, when Jason and I were watching football and I was falling asleep on the couch, he suggested that I go to bed. What was he, crazy? Like I was going to go to the other end of the house and get in bed all by myself so that Hannibal could get to me with less resistance? Yeah, sure. Instead, I set up a blanket and pillows on the floor in my family room and slept there until the game was over and Jason was ready to come to bed with me. Yes, I am 5 years old.

And last night, after the Patriots played, I was uncharacteristically eager to watch the Raiders game just to avoid going to sleep. And when I did go to bed, I could only fell asleep with my Soap Opera Digest and booklight on the bed right next to my head so that I'd be able to grab them that much quicker in the event of a Hannibal redux.

Wait, wasn't I just writing about how I'm trying to be all grown-up now? (nervous laugh)

2 comments:

  1. Man, your posts really are awesome. I love every single one of them. Your humor is construed so well in your writing ... I love it.

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