Last night, I had a nightmare. When I
awakened from it, my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t move (paralyzed by
fear?). As I lay there, I thought about everything but the dream’s details
because I knew that if I thought about the specifics of the dream, I would make
things worse for myself.
One thought I concentrated on was how my
heart was doing. It was pounding, but my thought was that while it was
pounding, it wasn’t beating irregularly. Before heading off to dreamland, my
heart was experiencing PVCs (Premature Ventricular Contractions). PVCs occur
when the heart beats prematurely – a beat or two that occurs before they are
supposed to. It feels like a racing heart, but it’s not. Since I’m in the
throes of menopause, I’m used to my PVCs occurring sometimes. They happen when
I’m stationary, not moving, not walking, not active. I take magnesium taurate
to reduce the occurrence of PVCs. Despite the reduction, I still experience them
occasionally. After a disturbing dream, a pounding but regular heartbeat is
good news to me because I know that, eventually, the strong beats will subside and
return to normal.
I don’t often have nightmares. To get to
sleep, I take melatonin. Sometimes, melatonin causes nightmares or vivid
dreams. Last night was my lucky night!
I have been experiencing a great deal of
stress lately, okay, not just lately, but ongoing for the past three years.
From moving to a new place (three years ago) to grieving over the deaths of
pets and family members (as recent as June of this year), I have been under
duress. As far as the grieving goes, I have not had a good cry since the death
of one of my cats (Bella, Nov. 15, 2012).
My most recent stress would be trivial in
other people’s minds – setting up and making my semi-annual dental appointment.
I do not look forward to these once-every-six-months-teeth-cleaning
appointments. I also don’t believe I’m alone in this feeling. My problem,
lately, is getting up in the morning to make that appointment. I already have
to awaken in the morning to get ready and go to work. Making the dental
appointment requires me to get up earlier than my usual time (of 9:30 AM).
Most people I know would scoff at that
time and consider it to be late. I am a night owl, through and through. There’s
no changing that for me. Trust me; I’ve tried many times to convert to the
morning lark routine. I can keep that up for roughly three to four days before
I revert to my night owl-ness.
Back to the dental appointment, I missed
that appointment, so, now, I’m stressed because I have to reschedule it, which
is just as stressful as missing it. At least, after I’ve had my teeth cleaned,
I know I can relax for another six months. This morning, upon realizing I
overslept the appointment, I complained, to no one in particular, about having
to go in the first place. We go to get our teeth cleaned twice a year, but don’t
we already have clean teeth? Don’t we brush and floss after every meal, every
snack, every time we put something in our mouths? I know this is irrational
thinking, brought on by anger at having missed that all-too-important visit.
However, when my life is turned upside-down, even for a brief moment,
rationalization (or, rather, irrationalization) creeps in and takes over my
normal thought processes.
I missed that appointment not just because
I overslept. I missed it because I had a nightmare that made me lose precious
moments of sleep. I knew I was already going to lose precious hours of sleep
when I went to sleep at 3 AM and had to get up by 8 AM. The nightmare
exacerbated the problem for me. I knew that getting up at 8 AM would make me
extremely tired by the time my 8 PM class started (and worse so when it ended
about 2 hours later). Subconsciously, I ruined that appointment for myself. I
talked (and dreamed) myself out of it, didn’t I?
Because mornings are bad for me, anyway, I’m
going to request an afternoon appointment that I know I can make (between
classes). I still won’t be looking forward to it, but, at least, I’ll be able
to go and get it over with just for another six-month-peace-of-mind.
For me, then, nightmares are not simply
bad dreams during sleep. My nightmares comprise the stressful moments in my
life. By all means, these moments are not as bad as they could be. I feel
blessed with what I have, and I am, certainly, not suffering great misfortunes
in life. I’m just saying that the stresses that have been building are becoming
a burden for me, and if I don’t do something soon to eradicate it, I could
become physically ill. I’ve experienced stress-induced illness before: from the
common cold (twice in a four-month period) to a rash on my hands that could
only be healed by antibiotics and a prescribed cream to a bilateral, bacterial
inner ear infection with side effects that took several months to heal.
