Nightmare Reactions

I think of some weird stuff when I'm walking back from town

It dawned on me when I was coming back from town that I haven't had a memorable nightmare since coming to Winchester. Which I find good. Because nightmares are bad. Hence why they are titled as such. But I was thinking about how people react to nightmares generally and how they all differ.

For example, when I have a nightmare, I wake up aggressively hyper-ventilating. So I can only assume I'm a quiet sufferer and toss about a bit while breathing heavily while what happens happens. While my mother screams like a banshee while she's having you. She's very loud, often waking me up when I'm back in Dorset. Numerous times I've had to go into her room to wake up. At which point she too hyper-ventilates slightly while re-adjusting to the 3am time that she's re-entered the waking world at before asking my why the hell I woke her up. (Except for one time when she hugged me the moment she saw me because I died or something).

But it's weird. I've never understood dreams and nightmares completely.

I know I'm not the only person this happens to, but sometimes I'll have a dream of something so mundane and think nothing of it, then a short time later, that exact event (or at least an uncanny variation) happens in reality. It drives me insane because I'll see it in my head and then it'll happen. I had a conversation last night in my kitchen that happened in a dream almost word for word. (I scared myself by mouthing my flatmate's exact response as she said it).

So I don't understand it. Because sleep is a messed up thing. You can have nightmares, dreams and lots of other stuff can happen to!

I read an article recently about a man who has something called "sleep sex" where he'll make love to his wife in the middle of the night while still fast asleep and have no recollection of the event in the morning. And more and more people appear to be getting this strange affliction.

I think I must have some variation of this strange thing after a strange event that happened on a school trip to Barcelona 4 years ago.

The basic background to the story is that I was sharing a hotel room with my friend Ben who, at the time, was in a relationship with a rather strange young woman. We in separate beds but they were pushed together in order to accord the other two people who we were sharing with. But we were in beds next to each other.

One night, as we were settling down to bed, Ben was texting this young woman back in England (as lovers do). And as I was falling asleep, Ben tapped me on the shoulder and said:

"By the way, thanks again for last night. I wouldn't have understood it without you!"

I said that it was ok and turned back over and shut my eyes. As I did, I realised that I actually had no idea what Ben was referring to. I asked him what he referred to and he said "the text". I still had no idea.

Ben then explained that he'd received a text at 3am the previous night from his girlfriend and that it worried him. So he woke me up to help him understand what was being said and to offer suggestions on how to deal with it.

To this day, I still do not remember this incident ever happening.

I don't disbelieve it happened, but the only explanation that I can think of is that I was still fast asleep when I was assisting Ben but I appeared to be awake and acting normally. Much like the sleep sex thing.

We got into an argument over the issue at the time because he didn't believe me when I said I didn't remember the text. The argument was left after I said "If I remembered it, I'd be able to tell you what was in the text word for word, and I can't!"

Weird.

But I'll never understand dreams. There was also a time where I dreamt that I'd grown up in Cardiff and not Dorset and that my life in Cardiff was the real life and this life was the dream. But that'd take too long to explain.

Maybe in another post.

But aren't dreams weird?

How do you react to dreams or nightmares?

Until next time!