Dreaming . . .

When I was very young, I had horrific nightmares I won't go into here. Be it enough said that at that young age the nightmares alone were traumatic, which in an already traumatic life, made a certain sense. Then, because of the way I dealt with the horrors of my existence, I stopped dreaming. With the exception of rare "dreams" of other people in other places as an observer, I never dreamed. In those rare dreams of other people and places, I was always this disembodied presence, just watching, never participating.

This continued right up to the point that Earl came into my life. For the first couple of years, before things got so ugly, I was still the disembodied watcher on the rare occasions I'd have any. Then, after Earl raped me the first time, the nightmares started with a vengeance. As time passed, and the horrors in my waking life grew, so too did the nightmares. I recall regularly waking up screaming, crying, and so terrified I wanted to kill myself so I'd never have to go through that again. Pretty serious when dreaming is bad enough that one wants to die. Unfortunately these dreams always involved me, first person, inexorably trapped into situations where I was once again being beaten, rapped and worse. I have pages of diary entries in the after math of some of these nightmares.

So it would be a gross understatement to say that dreaming for me has not been popular or acceptable.

Until recently. In the last couple of weeks I've had some interesting experiences in dreams. Dreams that actually had me waking up feeling okay, even good. It's SO weird! But you know, I'm not going to complain, I see it as another small step forward. Two amazing things about these new dreams, they don't hurt, and even more surprising is the background noise* is not there. Even for the first few blissful moments after waking up, the peace and quiet lingers. It's amazing, and leaves me hopeful for a future that is free from background noise*. Hey. a girl can dream right?

*I'm including a link to Laura's treatment of the term background noise because I so know what she's talking about there.