Nightmares

When we met he had all kinds of sleep issues. Every night he had the wildest dreams. They were vivid and intense and he would describe them in detail to me the next day. They were never light and fun, or they might start out that way but then would take bizarre twists and turns, as dreams often do, and usually end badly. He could even doze off for a while and go straight into dreaming. His dreams involved people and events from all different times in his life and had recurring themes, his wife and everyday life though, never in his dreams.

I knew this wasn't normal and explained to him a little about the different stages of sleep, rem and dreaming, how his brain was still awake while he was sleeping and things he could do to sleep better. He said he had been doing this as long as he could remember and we both knew that he was playing out his tormented psyche.

One funny thing is he was always worried about snoring, he would wake up and immediately ask, was I snoring, as if he was going to be in trouble or something. But he never did snore, in all those years maybe once or twice on a very rare occasion if he was super tired. Why do you think you snore I would ask him, who told you that? He said he went to sleep on his couch every night and woke up every few hours and I think it was his excuse to sleep there but who knows. I didn't learn for a long time the other reasons why he slept there.

After he moved out into his apartment his sleep immediately started to improved. I got him to start going to bed earlier, to keep the room cool, got him soft sheets and down pillows and showed him how to prop them up under his neck. And of course there was the added incentive of going to bed holding someone you love and who wants to hold you, the caresses and massages, the lack of stress and tension and most important of all - the work we did every day on dealing with emotions and creating a life that was authentic and full of joy and laughter.

Somewhere along the line the nightmares disappeared, and like all the other changes in his life, we were too busy living and having fun to even notice. And just as miraculously, he could put his head on the pillow and sleep all night long, like a baby, nestled in loving arms, safe and secure.

His nightmares are gone, and now my life is a nightmare. I never did dream much really, but now I wake in the middle of the night crying. The memories that frighten me - things that we said or did, that I believed were real and true, things that people don't lie about or fake.

It is terrifying to know that you can not tell what is real, that you can be fooled, and used and discarded, as if your life has no meaning; that the person in whose arms you also thought were safe and secure - could turn dangerous and treacherous. It's a nightmare that will never go away.