Nightmares: What They Could Mean

Writing my most recent post (titled "Fingernail Land" in case you haven't read it) gave me the idea to delve into the topic of nightmares. Now, this has been a subject I have always been curious about because when I was little, I had nightmares that would wake me up in the middle of the night with tears in my eyes. However, as I got older, my nightmares subsided into vague memories and now I hardly ever dream at all. This had made me curious as to what caused those nightmares and why they suddenly stopped.

Now, I present a disclaimer. I am by no means an expert in dreams and the things that go bump in the night. However, I can describe one of my most frequent nightmares from my childhood and try to unpack whatever dark secrets it might have been saying about my life at the time.

When I was between the ages of six and eight, it was a very specific time frame, I awoke almost every night to a nightmare that always happened in the same place: a maze.

Sometimes, the maze was in my school. Sometimes, I got lost in a playground or water park that never ended. Sometimes it was Halloween night and I was exploring a neighbor's haunted house. However, most of these "maze nightmares" took place underground, in a cave. As I sit here and type this, chills are running down my arms because I can almost feel the cold dampness of the stone walls. I can almost hear the soft wails coming from corridors I'm too scared to venture down. I remember the feeling of tears in my eyes as I stumbled blindly deeper and deeper into a cave, just trying to find a person to grab onto and never let go. But I always ended up alone.

In most of these underground maze dreams, I explored the caves with my family, but there was something that always drew them away. I tried my hardest to follow them, but eventually I lost everyone and wandered around in the dark, alone. By the end of the nightmare, my chest was aching with desperation and fear as I knew something was following me and would kill me if I couldn't find my family in time. Sometimes that "something" was a mummy with decaying flesh. Other times it was a robot that would rip me apart.

Every single time I got lost in my dreams, I was in a different place, with different monsters trying to kill me. Yet, every single time, I felt the exact same way: desperate for an escape.

A quick Google search has led me to believe that something must have been going on in my life that would have caused me anxiety. The only thing I can think of that might have made me feel out of control in my life was how often my family moved around during this time.

Now, I don't blame my parents at all for what happened to me as a kid. I was young, impressionable, and easily spooked or upset. Everyone was like that as a kid. If you've never experienced something before, the first time you experience that event will feel like the end of the world. I wish everyone understood such a simple concept. Something that seems completely unimportant, such as ice cream spilling onto concrete, will traumatize a six-year-old who has never lost a scoop of ice cream to the hot sun. That's why I'm not upset that my parents uprooted my life several times in order to pursue their careers. I got to experience that difficult part of life early-on, and now I understand how hard it can be to move away from friends.

I know that paragraph went into a different topic, which I'll probably discuss in more detail in another post, but that's something I'd like to clear up before I continue.

I was never separated from friends in my dreams. In fact, during the years when I was most haunted by nightmares, I didn't really have anybody I could call a friend. Or, at least, anybody I wanted to get close to. I tried to avoid making new friends because every time I felt like I finally had a best friend, my parents moved to another city or switched what school I attended. I think that's why I was pulled away from my family in all of my nightmares. It wasn't because I was afraid of losing them; it was because I was afraid of losing any friends I made. That awful, painful ache in my chest that made it hard to breathe was amplified in my nightmares, but I did feel that same loneliness when I was awake.

From what I know about nightmares, which is limited, these terrors you feel in dreams are just amplifications of fears or problems you're facing in your awake life. You might feel as though everyone is against you, therefore, you dream of people chasing you. You might feel like you'll never love or feel loved again. Therefore, you dream of being betrayed and killed by someone you trusted. These are just a few examples of nightmares people have probably had. Like I've said before, I'm only speaking from my own experiences, so don't take what I say to heart. Everyone is different and struggles with different problems.

Now, for fun, I'm going to write about two nightmares that have stuck with me ever since I dreamed them as a young child.

Nightmare One:

It was dark, but my nightlight lit up the entire room in a blue glow. My sister was not sleeping beneath me. It was just me. On the top bunk. Frozen in fear.

I knew it was ridiculous to feel so scared. I knew there was nothing to fear in my own bedroom, but I still couldn't move. Then, without doing anything, I felt my head turn towards the door.

There, sitting above the door frame, but out of place against plain white walls, was a Tiki mask.

Its intricate design was not what made me stare. The teeth that seemed to be ready to open and devour anything in its sight, and the blood-red paint that was fading into a dark maroon didn't faze me. It was the fear I felt when I looked into its empty, soulless eyes. I'd never felt more terrified in my entire life. I trembled, but there was no reason to be trembling. I just knew that the mask was the embodiment of Evil, itself.

I could have been frozen in that state, staring into the mask's eyes, for hours, or mere seconds, but either way, it felt like an eternity.

I'm not sure why, or how, but I opened my mouth and screamed. I screamed like my life depended on it. Seconds later, the Tiki mask's teeth parted and it screamed back.

I woke up with a racing heart, ringing ears, and an image burned into my mind.

Red eyes and a mouth full of wooden teeth, frozen in a deadly scream.

Nightmare Two:

The basement was flooded. I'm not sure whose house I was in, or why I was the one to investigate the flooding, but I was all the same.

I walked down steep stone steps and felt water lap at my ankles. I waded further into waist-deep water, flashlight in hand, and discovered that the basement was actually a dark cavern with passageways made out of stone brick that went in every direction. There was an eerie blue glow whose source I could not find. The door behind me, leading to a warm house and a world without flooded caverns, remained opened. And yet, I didn't turn back. Whatever was happening down here, I was going to see it. Out of the darkness, a man on a wooden canoe with a green lantern swinging from a metal hook rowed in front of me, and I pulled myself up, somehow completely dry.

It was like I was in Hades' domain, being rowed by Charon, ferryman of the underworld, to the land of the dead. Neither I, nor the person rowing, spoke. Eventually, I was dropped off in the middle of a completely random stone brick passageway, and the ferryman rowed out of sight, leaving me alone to explore a flooded cave lit in green torchlight. I continued down the passageway, flashlight gone now, and turned down many corners, going deeper and deeper into this strange and flooded medieval-looking cave. Eventually, I found myself turning into a small room, still flooded, and still lit with lime-green torches. Suddenly, the arch I'd just passed through became a stone door that slammed shut, trapping me inside.

I didn't panic, like a rational person would have done in that scenario. Instead, I calmly glanced around for an escape. A brick that might have been loose. A button I could push. There was nothing. I was trapped. However, something caught my eye. Above the sealed-off archway was a tiny fairy-sized skull. I had only a moment to look at it before its eyes glowed green and a dart shot out of its mouth, instantly hitting me and enveloping me in darkness.

I woke up, disturbed but not terrified. Confused, but calm.

So those are my two most prominent nightmares from my childhood. Trust me, there are more, but I'm not sure if anyone will even read these, so does it really matter? I don't think so.

My next few posts will most likely be old essays I wrote for English class, all of which got excellent grades, might I add. Uploading those will give me time to find more interesting topics to write about, so be looking forward to topics that are (hopefully) more fun than nightmares.