Sasee Magazine

Someone was in my house last night. I heard the high-pitched beep of the laundry room door sensor and heavy footsteps on the linoleum. My husband, Craig, was asleep upstairs, and I was on the couch with the dog. I could tell the intruder was approaching the living room, leaving me no way to exit without being seen.

Risking being shot or captured, I grabbed the dog’s collar, opened the front door, and ran out into my yard. There I stood, trying to call for help, but unable to find my own voice. Passing cars ignored my frantic gestures and refused to stop. So I knelt down on the wet grass and waited. What was I waiting for? Help from a neighbor? The police? Maybe I was waiting to wake up.

I have been plagued by this nightmare for the past month. Sometimes I get a little farther down the street in my quest for help. I knock on neighbors’ doors but no one is ever home. Some nights I run about three blocks where I stand on the edge of a busy, four lane highway, my hand clasped around the dog’s collar and my nightgown blowing in the breeze. Other nights, I wake up just as the intruder grabs my arms and pins them behind my back.

The situation varies slightly, but the resulting emotions are always the same: terror, helplessness, and confusion. The feelings continue well into the daylight hours, even as I am driving to work. I can’t seem to shake the negativity, the evil thoughts and the feeling that someone is after me.

Following advice from my doctor, I cut out evening glasses of wine, went without coffee with dinner, and said farewell to late night snacks, depriving my body of anything that might fuel the nightmare-spawning process. But even in the absence of these pleasures, there is no peace when I sleep.

Childhood sleep was such a blissful part of my existence. I dreamt my bedroom was made entirely of candy, I lived at Disney World, and the Smurfs attended my school. Sometimes my night journeys transported me into fields with wild ponies or high into the clouds on a hot air balloon. I was happy and free. I was in charge.

My teenage dreams took me to the prom with Jude Law where my friends stared and practically drooled with envy. I won contests and modeling contracts, made As in Geometry, and was accepted to Ivy League schools – all from the comfort of my canopy bed. What I lacked in real life, I more than made up for in my dreams. I was popular, daring, uninhibited and sexy.

Something changed a few years ago. It started gradually – one or two bad dreams each month. They were vivid and powerful and, without having to write them down, the details remained with me.

I dreamt a commercial jet crashed in the field by my house. Charred passengers crawled out of the cornfield and up my front porch. They pressed their faces against the glass, clawed at the screen and begged me for help.

I had a recurring dream where I watched a roller coaster derail on its way down a steep drop, and all of the people fell to their deaths. Then, another train climbed the lift hill, and it happened again…and again…and again.

The nightmares started to impact my waking life. Images from my dreams invaded my conscious mind, and I refused to fly for several years and went two summers without visiting an amusement park.

Recently, the nightmares have become more frequent and pervasive. The intruder visits regularly. Each time, he comes in through the back door, and I run out the front. He tells me I can’t escape him, and that he will catch me – one day. And though he hasn’t yet harmed my family or me, I fall asleep afraid that he will.

I have been reading more about the underlying causes of nightmares, and that some people actually require psychotherapy to rid themselves of bad dreams. But before I take that route, I am practicing desensitization and rehearsal techniques. So far, I have managed to wake myself up at the start of the nightmare, but I have not been able to make myself dream of anything else.

I long for the day when I can reason with my subconscious mind and pilot the course of my dreams. When I can, I will bask in the sun on the beaches of Bora Bora, cruise along the glaciers of Alaska and soar with the barnacle geese during fall migration.

Until that night, I seek refuge in the waking hours and through daydreams. When I am awake, I navigate my thoughts. But at night, I remain a prisoner to my nightmares, reaching my arms out through the bars of my subconscious and hoping that someone will stop and help.