The Terrors Learn to Wait

One of the best things about living with night terrors is that over time you learn to adapt. You learn how to find a way to deal with the horrible images, the scary moments, and the bloodcurdling events that your mind presents. 

You learn this through trial and error. At some point you become, if you’re lucky, good enough at it that you can remove yourself from that horrible dream. You can remove yourself from the night terror it doesn’t stop the feeling or the emotion or quite frankly the terror. Like hitting pause right before the scary moment in the movie. Hopefully, you walk away and the movie never continues.  But some nights and more importantly, some mornings hitting pause isn’t enough. 

My brain is very good at deleting the things that it knows I shouldn’t see again but just like any solid state storage there’s going to be an echo that sticks with you. I don't know what my mind deleted from last night's terror. I do know that it terrified me enough that I woke up at 4 AM and decided that whether the sun was up or not, I was done  

When that happens and I have no recollection of the dream,  I know that my subconscious is doing its best to keep it from me, but it doesn’t always work. 

I don’t know what I saw in my dreams last night, but I do know that moments of today out of my vision, there’s been something  That I think I see and I look and it’s not there. 

Which means it was either a trick of the light that my brain couldn’t delete or that something is still stalking me. Chasing me until my foolish ass does exactly what it wants and that is to go to sleep. To give that echo of a memory that my brain tried to delete the chance to take hold again. 

Some nights find my insomnia is not being able to sleep because of FOMO or restless legs or just not wanting to face tomorrow. 

Some nights my urge not to sleep is because I know that there is a nightmare waiting for me on the other side of my eyelids.  A nightmare that scared me so much last night. I deleted it and I woke myself up. It's waiting as a shadow in the corner of my vision or on full display across the curtain of night. 

No matter how long you procrastinate, the terrors learn to wait.