Bad Dreams

This is a true story.

When I was just a teen-ager, or perhaps not quite a teen-ager, I was plagued by a reoccurring nightmare: I am woken up by a noise in the middle of the night.  I wander out of my room to witness a strange and terrible man murder each one of my family members with a knife.  One by one.  From room to room.  Killing each family member until I am the last one alive.  Retreating to my room, he breaks through my door.  I run and hid in my bathroom.  He breaks through the door.  He is bigger, taller, stronger, cleverer than me, and set on his course.  He is going to kill me.

Every time I have this dream I try to out maneuver, or find a new escape plan, yet every night he kills me, or I wake up in a panic, sit straight- up in my bed awake.  Sweating.  Panicked.  Terrorized.

Until I discovered the word, No.

I am not making this up.  It is unbelievable.  It is the truth.

I stopped my bad dreams and nightmares, by purposefully telling the killer, No.

No, you have no power over me.

No, you will diminish from me.

No, you are not real.

No, you will not hurt me.

No.

No, I can tell you, No.

No, I have the ability – even in dream – to tell you, no.

No, I have the ability to control my own dreams, or nightmares.

No.

Loud, or soft.  It is still the same.  No.

I stopped having this nightmare.

I have never had it since.

A short while after this I told my mother of the nightmare.  Shock took hold of her face that she tried to hide when she discovered when, the nights I was having these dreams.  She told me she had discovered the front door of our home had been left unlocked.  Something that never happened.  Something that she believed my father had done.  Purposeful or not.  It was discovered.

Now, several years later we moved from that home in Oregon to Florida.  I was with my mother at some doctor’s appointment.  I was waiting for her in doctor’s reception area.  I do not recall what kind of doctor it was, it could have been an acupuncturist, or a chiropractor, or something along those lines.  I am not sure it was a general doctor or family practitioner.  When, I overhear a conversation between the two-other people in the waiting room.  This is a detail I would most honestly not have noted in my brain before if it had not been for all these police years.  They were both African-American women.

One woman was explaining her bad dream to the other woman.  I believe she said something about stones.  Stones being placed.

I had to interrupt her.  I had to say something.

You don’t have to dream that dream, I said.

You can fight back in your own dream.  You can take the rocks and throw them away, or stop it, or say no.  It is possible.  I’ve done it.

She didn’t believe me.

I didn’t stop though.

I must have looked ridiculous, I was still a teen-ager.  I was telling an adult what to do.

It bothered me so much, this woman was worried, sick and troubled, yet there is power within ourselves.

It bothered me that I don’t think she took or heeded my advice in fighting back within her own mind.

Who says you have to live through a bad dream?

Irony.

The Matrix.

I cannot possibly be the only person to have discovered the power within ourselves.