Last night, I had a VERY difficult time settling down to go to sleep. There was no particular reason for this — I’m not stressed out about anything, my girls’ fevers are both done and now they’re just dealing with the residual coughs afforded by summer colds, and The Big House Move is getting resolved. So I don’t know what my problem was. I kept thrashing around, trying to get comfortable. This is very weird for me; I can usually go to sleep in about 10 minutes.
I even tried my no-fail Go To Sleep position (which Jerry calls the “Anti-Snuggle Position” because of how my elbows are sticking out), and that didn’t even work. I was SO annoyed.
I finally decided that the cause of the problem is that my throat is a little sore from the congestion, since I have managed to catch a much milder version of the cold my girls have been passing back and forth. So I got up and took a half-dose of Nyquil. Nyquil, at a full dose, is supposed to get you 8 hours of sleep, right? So, when I took my half-dose at 1:30am (after thrashing for over two hours), I figured that should get me to about 5:30, when Alice is programmed to wake up.
At some point in the interim, I had a nightmare. I was about 16, at my parents’ house, and I was alone. I went in the front door and apparently didn’t close it well enough. I turned around the shut the door and there was a shadowy figure there. I tried to slam the door, but this person shoved their body through the opening so I was slamming a door on a shoulder, and their arm was reaching around trying to grab me.
I kept trying to slam, slam, SLAM that door, but I couldn’t make contact. You know how that is in dreams, right? I was getting SO frustrated. I needed to scream, but you know how THAT is in dreams… Couldn’t scream. I was mute. I was terrified that this person was going to be able to push through the door and get to me, so I WILLED myself to scream, somehow knowing that if I *did* scream, Jerry would get me out of this predicament. Maybe I was suddenly aware that it was a dream, even though I was scared out of my wits.
So I made the closest noise to screaming that I could muster, sort of an anxious moan. Probably about four or five times, I don’t know. And then I felt Jerry’s warm hand on my left shoulder, and heard him, “Elaine? Are you having a bad dream? I’m here. It’s okay.”
I think I said, “Thank you,” and slept peacefully for the rest of the night. Alice slept until 6:30, bless her little soul.