I lay awake in bed staring up at my ceiling. It’s morning but there is no light coming in through my curtains. It’s pitch black. The only thing I can hear is the swoosh swoosh noise of the ceiling fan going round and round. It takes a while to adjust my eyes to the darkness around me. When I do I immediately close my eyes again so as not to lose my most recent nightmare or dream to some.
Everyone that I’ve ever met has had the dream where they fall. They fall from the sky or off a building or from some other place high up. For some people falling isn’t very terrifying, it’s exhilarating, an adrenaline rush. For others it’s horrible, especially for those that are afraid of heights.
I hate these nightmares. Where you feel like the world is dropping out from under you and there isn’t a way to stop it. You’re alone and you don’t know what to do. You become so scared that your body jumps you out of sleep in the most heart wrenching way. I have these falling dreams but there has always been something a little different about it compared to what I’ve heard about others falling dreams. As I’m falling I feel some other alien feeling right along with it. It’s a strange feeling; a feeling of being pinched and squeezed but there isn’t anything there actually doing the pinching and squeezing. I feel like I’m being squeezed so hard that my head is going to pop. Like the way your head feels when you have a lot of sinus pressure. There is an achy feeling. It’s frightening. I’ve been having that nightmare from the time I was a child. It’s the one that has scared me the most of all my recurring nightmares. It’s the one that’s hardest for me to comprehend no matter how much effort I put into my attempts to analyze.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to experience this nightmare at least once a month. I always dread the fact that it’s coming and there isn’t anything I can do stop it.