Unable to sleep, I lie in bed listening to my wife’s measured breaths. After some time they pick up in pace, intensify. Dreaming, I think.
They quicken further, rattle, fall over one another. She twitches; her face squeezes. Nightmare? It sounds like a doozy.
I feel a bit strange, lying there perfectly still and alert beside my wife as she struggles against – what? Monster? Ghost? Car accident, plummeting airplane? The recurring antagonists of my own nightmares are man-eating predators: dinosaurs, sharks, bears, the alien in Alien. Silly, sure, but each harrowing encounter seems utterly, frighteningly real.
I should wake her. It doesn’t seem right, calmly listening to horror throttling her. After nightmares we usually wake each other to talk them over, decompress – a literal reality check. Wouldn’t it be better to bring her back to reality earlier, rescuing her from whatever her subconscious mind has dredged up to torment her?
But there’s the rub: this nightmare is an outworking of her emotions, something her own mind needs to process. How dare I intrude? Little can be more sacred than the mind’s own discourse with itself. Much as I want to, I cannot interrupt – to do so would be to disrespect her very personhood.
Besides, my own nightmares remain inside me as vivid self-products, illuminating facets of my psychological constitution. Though unpleasant, I wouldn’t choose to forget them if I could. Nightmares have even taught me things about myself I hadn’t known, like the time two lionesses hunted my wife and me. We jumped a fence, faced a dead end, watched the lionesses dig their claws into the chain link to climb – and stuck there without escape, I turned to face them down. I had no chance against them, knew full well they would kill me, but I faced them anyway, determined to go down defending my wife. That was the dream’s end; I woke sweating yet proud. It had seemed real – no, it had been real, as real as ordinary consciousness, and what I had done astonished me.
Would I deny my wife the opportunity to discover such courage within herself?
Her panicked breathing continues, and suddenly I wonder if a rapist is accosting her. She had such a nightmare once, the worst by far – woke crying, refusing to discuss it. I don’t want her enduring such pain and fear again, especially when rescue is as easy as a shoulder nudge. Isn’t nightmare insurance one of the fringe benefits of marriage?
Firmly I shake her shoulder. “Honey, wake up. It’s okay. Wake up, babe, everything’s okay.”
“Hunh? What?” She turns, flails. “What?”
“It’s okay, babe, you’re just having a nightmare. It’s not real, it’s just a dream.”
“What?” She thrashes a bit, then blurts: “The treasure!”
“What?”
“The treasure!” Her arm reaches forward, grabbing at something. “It was right there, right – I almost had it, I was – oh, why did you have to wake me up!”
So much for that husbandly good deed.
February 1, 2007 at 9:34 pm |
Turns out she was trying to beat a pack of pirates to a sunken treasure chest, swimming as fast as she could underwater — which explains the deep breathing (well, kind of — we all know we can breathe underwater in our dreams). It was cute to see her pout, throw her face into the pillow and try to dive back into the dream.
February 2, 2007 at 7:52 am |
Even though I saw it coming through the whole story, I still laughed out loud at the ending, good bit!
I always thought that when your dreaming you are in deep sleep. I recently learned from my dentist that when your in real deep sleep, you do not dream. When your dreaming you are not actually getting real rest. People that dream a lot, like my wife, usually are poor sleepers
February 2, 2007 at 2:11 pm |
You are simply a gifted man.