Fear, Part 1: The Boogieman

Had the craziest nightmare last night, but it was so interesting to me that when I woke up from it I didn’t have that residual fear and icky feeling one usually has after waking from a nightmare, but was immediately struck by the meaning of it. I wish I had jumped out of bed immediately to capture the details, but unfortunately I have been extra tired this week and could not keep myself from falling back into a much more peaceful sleep.

But I got the gist of it. I was somehow trapped in a dark room. There were others with me in this room, although it wasn’t clear later what became of them or what their role was. Also in this room was a very bad man. Some kind of horror movie character I am going to have a hard time describing; I can’t think of a real horror movie character analog. He was mostly invisible. He was able to appear and disappear, making eluding him impossible. We were also trapped in this very small room, so even if I could see him the entire time it wouldn’t have mattered all that much anyway. He was attacking me, scratching or otherwise able to hurt me without a weapon. The most vivid aspect of this part of the dream was my fear. I was terrified. I was more scared in this situation than I had ever been in my life.

Somehow I got out of the room and I was in another, larger room with a lot of people I knew. I was trying to warn them of this crazy, dangerous, murderous boogieman who was right behind me. Then he was there, attacking me again, and I was screaming, pointing, exclaiming and entreating God, as one does.

And then Carissa was there, gentle, approaching slowly, reaching out to touch me. And as she spoke the words, “Daniel, there’s no one there,” he disappeared, and I was left with only the symptoms of my panic, catching my breath, grasping reality, Carissa there calming me, helping me understand. The realization that I had gone mad and imagined the entire thing was its own, replacement fear, mixed with dread, for what it meant for me. I had allowed myself to be torn away from reality in a serious way, and would have to be brought back somehow. When the boogieman reappeared I would have to tell myself he wasn’t real at just the moment my legs started to automatically run.

As I looked at Carissa, bewildered, I reached to touch the back of my neck and asked, “If he wasn’t real, why am I hurt?” and fingered the raw skin under the scrapes. She replied just as gently, “I don’t know.”

Funny that I had this dream the night when I went to sleep watching The Century of Self, including an audio clip of Anna Freud saying, "Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious."

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