Recurring Nightmare

Even with the Lunesta, I still have vivid dreams. I am so thankful that I do not have regular night terrors anymore – my night terrors were on the level of: screaming my head off, punching Bryan, and being petrified of someone being in the room with me… I used to have night terrors several times a week and now they come more like once a month. I seriously need to write a letter of thanks to the Lunesta people. I will take a vivid, unsettling dream over a night terror any day.

Last night I had a dream that I have over and over again – that I am losing my house. That we cannot afford it and we have to sell/move/leave quickly. It gives me a mild panic attack to even think about it.

I have talked to my therapist about this dream, and we believe it comes from the night that we left my dad in the middle of the night. It had been a bad bad night, where my drunken father had ripped the phone off the wall, hit my mom so hard that it ripped her earrings out of her ear (I actually remember the earrings too… blue and gold ones she got in Germany… this is strange for me because I have a disassociate memory problem where I have blocked much of my childhood from my memory.) Anyway, after things settled down, my mom asked me what I wanted to do. I said leave. I meant for the night. She meant for forever.

We enticed my sister out of the living room where my dad was half passed out on the couch watching TV, snuck out the back door, pushed the car down the driveway, and went to my grandmothers. It was when we walked in the door and my mom told Oma, “that was the last time,” that I realized I had just ripped my family apart.

As an adult I do realize that it was not my decision really, and certainly it was not my fault… but I carried that guilt with me for a long long time. I think I also get really scared when thinking of having to change like that so quickly – the feeling of being uprooted has stayed with me.

Here is the cool thing about starting to get a handle on all these feelings I have from childhood. Even though the dream was vivid and unsettling… I have started to be able to turn my head around while in the middle of the dream. Last night I was able to remind myself it was all a dream, we weren’t going to lose our house, etc and calm myself down.