Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

When darkness comes

and it’s time to settle down and go to sleep,

the walls in my mind start to grow taller and taller,

until I find myself trapped in my own mind.

I try to focus on positive things:

beach landscapes, my dog, my husband.

But suddenly the beach is swarming with pulsating jellyfish.

My dog has run away.

My husband has left me.

In my mind, all my worst fears come true.

In slumber, those fears play out in dreams that feel like virtual reality.

They say you can’t feel pain in dreams,

But that simply isn’t true.

I feel the pain of loss, the pain of fear, the pain of knives thrown at me

and my soul being crushed into a million tiny pieces.

Most of the time, I can’t distinguish between the dream and the reality.

My anxieties pour over me and suddenly I’m bathing in a sea of dread and sorrow.

If I realize I’m in a dream, I need to keep that secret to myself,

For the minute I declare, “None of this is real!”,

That’s the moment when my dreams take an even darker turn.

All the people surrounding me take it as a personal attack on them.

Though, I suppose it makes sense, as I’m refuting their very existence.

It feels like morning is never going to come,

That I’m stuck in the end of days,

to witness the fury and chaos

that comes with the inevitable final day.

I truly believe there won’t be a tomorrow.

So when I do wake, it feels like a miracle.

I turn in bed and see my husband and our dog,

sleeping peacefully. Like nothing even happened.

I remind myself that what happened was only a dream

and try to stop feeling the fears and anxieties that came with it.