At the risk of sounding like an overgrown child (which I’m often told I am), I hate nightmares. As a child, I was well-accustomed to that all too familiar feeling of waking up in cold sweat - either startled awake by a particularly painful scene my overimaginative mind conjured up, or slipping, excruciatingly slowly, back into consciousness from a horrifyingly real, yet devastatingly dreaded alternate universe.

It’s not a secret that I’m scared of the dark. In actual fact, the truth meanders somewhat closer to my morbid fear of the unknown. It’s not even like I’m some sort of control freak - most will attest to my being one of the most (and often far too excessively) laid back people they know, at least until it comes to something stupid like how my music is arranged in my computer, in which case I get disturbingly anal. But while I don’t actually need to be in control of whatever situation I’m going through, I do like to at least be aware of what’s going on. Hence my vapid dislike for surprise parties, being kept waiting and the suchlike.

I once had a conversation with a friend discussing what exactly dreams were. She said it always bugged her how sometimes they could be premonitions of sorts, foretelling likely outcomes - usually the worst case scenarios - of situations you were just getting yourself into; at times, they taunted you with how you often wished you were; at others completely ridiculous figments of your imagination that you knew couldn’t possibly materialize; and at others yet a vividly drawn out recap of significant events that managed to weasel their way into your subconscious, amalgating into a long drawn episode that wears you down and breaks you till you have no energy left to fall back asleep. Back then, I flippantly told her, “Why bother stressing yourself out over dreams when you’ll never even be able to tell (for sure) which category they fall into? They could be your hopes, your fears, or some ludicrous notion that your restless mind cooked up, and you’d never be able to differentiate them from the premonitions until the event actually took place.”

I wish I could so confidently buy back into that ideology now. From the past couple of weeks’ worth of my overactive subconscious, it seems like my childhood nighttime demons are back to haunt me, and in a big way. I know I’ve said that I wasn’t ready for a relationship now, but it’s at times like these when I really miss having someone I could awaken right next to me, just so I wouldn’t have to fall back asleep alone, without your arms to make me feel safe.

Now to attempt to fall back asleep.

Now Playing: Lonely Loney by Feist