The unrelenting battles of sleep
Nightmares are a constant in my life, to this day. The only differences in them are the topics or places, whether they seem like a real situation or a metaphor for one, and how I react to the situation.
I have many that are in an unknown place that feels “familiar.” Often, I am on a dangerous road – a highway under construction or repair- up on a mountainside with no guardrails along the cliff edge. And frequently, there is water right next to me or even flooding over me. Raging, swollen rivers right next to my car tires, or towering ocean waves slamming against the ground right near me or over me. Always there is the sense of danger, risky paths, or of being suddenly overwhelmed.
Other times they ranged from mild fury — screaming at a dysfunctional friend then walking away from the relationship – to being raped, then murdered.
Then there are odd ones in which I am, for some reason, walking around unclothed, and no one seems to notice. Or I walk into my home — my secure retreat from the world — only to find my grandparents and Dad, sitting around. I start yelling at them to leave and demand to know how they got in, feeling both violated and frightened that my “inner sanctum” has been breached.
And always, there are snakes…
They’re bringing reinforcements
Despite my explosive previous nightmare where I pummeled a snake to death out of maternal protective rage, they continued to be a frequent image in my dreams. The difference now was that I didn’t freak out quite so easily. I fought back harder, but then they became increasingly vicious. It was almost as if they realized I wasn’t giving up so easily anymore. They also seemed to bring more and more of them to the fight against me, probably for the same reason.
On this night, I was confronted with snakes that came in large numbers, arrayed themselves in front of me, then started to encircle me so I would have no escape.
Later that same night, the dream morphed into a scene from my museum job:
Journal, 4/30/2024:
“I am at work, and snakes are EVERYWHERE! And people are just moving around them and assuming this is normal! One of my co-workers is taking me through various lab prep rooms and describing the job and the situation. He points out buckets of writhing snakes and says I will just have to accept that. Then I have to keep picking up long anaconda-type eels and feeding them into a long tube over and over.
In another room, there are pit vipers scattered all over the floor. He tells me I just have to learn to deal with that and avoid them as needed, but that THEY have run of the place.
Then there is the other part of the job that involves going into a large pool – like a tropical swamp – and there are all kinds of jungle creatures, along with large numbers and varieties of alligators and snakes that are hidden and will pop up unexpectedly.
Outraged, I yelled, “How do you deal with this????!!!” Yet I also tried to shrug it off and told myself: Well, I just have to do this; it’s the job and everyone else is doing it. But immediately I absolutely choked on that thought and refused to accept this. I thought: NO! I don’t want to do this.
8/24/2024
A yellow-patterned venomous snake is outside by the bench at our old house. It keeps coming around and at me. I go into the garage and try to close the door, but the garage door closes so slowly that I fear the snake will get in…and it does.
It keeps attacking me viciously and aggressively. I avoid and deflect and beat at it with a broom fiercely — a mighty battle takes place, which is very stressful. I put my all into the fight, but so did the snake, and it wouldn’t let up with its fierce attacks.
My mom is in the background, and I yell to her for help, but she just doesn’t react – just passively looks away.
The snake attacks again and again and again. And while I fight it fiercely, the battle is long, constant, and hard. Somehow I avoid getting bitten.
But now, from the house, two old ladies, who are angry, malevolent, and very nasty, start to taunt the snake. They really anger it when they grab it, put its head into a meat sandwich, then bring it inside and release it near me, so when I come into the room, it is raging, attacks me, and bites me.
I then have to drive over three hundred miles on old narrow backroads to get help, and it is taking forever. And I am having to drive without my tea/coffee. To make it worse, I have to stop at this school and go into the library where Ed and I sit down at a table with a bunch of middle-school-aged boys who are being jerks. Not surprising, and that is ok, but one boy is playing with very sharp arrows. I take them away, but then he picks up a rifle. A teacher walks in, and I let her know he has a rifle, but she blows it off as being a toy when it is actually a real gun.
The nightmare switches to me being my current age, but working in the research lab from my college days. I am struggling to keep up with young grad students, pretending I can do this job, even as I don’t want to. I think I should just do it and tough it out, but then I stop and ask myself: WHY do I keep putting up with “toughing things out?! How old am I now?! And isn’t there something else I should be doing with my time at this point in life?
I noted in my journals that I suspect I was trying to fight off Dad, needed Mom’s help but she either turned away or made things worse, and I was left to scramble to get help, avoid more threats, and then finally start to question WHY I was putting up with all of this.
Also, I observed that my dreams on these nights were often no longer just one nightmare here or there, but an “all-night-long series” of one nightmare after another. And this particular night was no different.
The rush to protect me
The dream starts peacefully enough. I am holding a pet rat, which on some level I know is my younger self. It is asleep in my arms as I gently cradle it.
After a bit, the rat/me wakes up and wants to play, so I set it down on the rim of a nearby pail, where it starts to crawl around. But in that same moment, a pit viper leaps up from inside the bucket and lunges at the rat, ready to strike. I am filled with protective terror and literally fly across the room to grab my pet rat (me) and protect it from getting hurt while I fight off the snake.
But sometimes, the nightmares are HIM
This one from two years ago was of my father, absolutely enraged at me because he had been sent to jail for abusing me. It was only for either three months or three years, but in either case, I was furious because I didn’t feel that was long enough.
He, on the other hand, got released and then demanded sympathy for what he suffered as a kid. He was raging and pouting because I dared to send him to jail and expected me to feel bad about that.
I told him I didn’t care and that he deserved more jail time. Not only did he show no remorse, but he nearly attacked me for what I said.
Crying and yelling at me, he demanded I apologize to him, at which point I exploded in rage: “When do YOU apologize for what you did to ME?! When are you ever going to be sorry?!!!”
Then, screaming at him as loudly as I could, I called him a bully and coward and tried to provoke him to come at me. I was ready for him and ready to let him have it.
I woke up at that point, though, and again, like after many of my nightmares, I needed to stay awake for a while to let the raging emotions of the dream subside.
Progress in a strange way?
While the many, and longer nightmares were unrelenting and upsetting, I also took some heart in their changing nature. It seemed that as I made more progress in EMDR and therapy, my reactions in my dreams to threats had more and more self-assurance and power.
The more I pushed back on old programming in my waking hours, the more I questioned things and fought back at night. And unlike past years where I couldn’t speak or dial a phone in the dream – I had no voice and couldn’t call for help – I was yelling in these nightmares…and sometimes even out loud as I slept, waking my husband. So in a small way, there was progress.
But they kept coming. So my only choice was to keep up the fight during the day. Maybe the more I could learn about what the abuse had done to me in life, maybe the more I could find a way to heal my sleep?
Up Next
Learning about trauma, and its many hidden costs…
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
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Soul Mosaic 
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