Nightmares

Just when I'm finally sleeping adequately, I'm having nightmares.  I've always wondered what prompts them.  Last night I had two of them, though one was far worse than the other.  I had been reading an Amy Tan book prior to my falling asleep. In it she recollected how a friend of hers had been murdered.  My dreams, I think, took a hold of that image and worked on it some more. In the fuzziness of the morning, I remember guns, and fear, and breaking glass. I also remember waking up just enough to say, I need to switch this dream to something else.  I eventually fell back asleep only to be staying at my friend's house in my dream, only my friend never showed up.  A key had been left for me to let me in, but no friend. I fell asleep at the house, but still no friend by morning. I woke up wondering if this was more in the genre of murder and fear for a person's life, or was it in the genre of the previous week of being dumped.  In either genre, it sucked. I'm not a huge worrier type person (well, at least not compared to my mother!) so when something gets me worried, it's pretty significant.

I've heard the information about choosing not to dream these things, or being able to change the channel when one becomes conscious of having a bad dream, but I've never been successful at either.  Sometimes I think these dreams are a way to prepare me for the future.   Sure, I can take the general safety precautions of locking my doors, closing windows on the ground floor at night, but sometimes one has to learn how to still think rationally in fear.  Same thing with the second dream. Perhaps I need to learn what to do when a person goes missing. I woke up in the process of calling my friend's cell phone in the dream, to see if my friend simply got drunk and stayed somewhere else that night, if my friend picked up someone and stayed at that person's house, or if my friend was in trouble somewhere.  I'll never know where my friend was in the dream, though all of my friends have the courtesy to let me know if they aren't coming home when I've been invited to stay at their home!

For whatever reason, I'm having these bad dreams and I wish they would stop. I need to feel rested when I wake up, not as if I've been fighting for my life!  That said, at least I am sleeping again.  I'm not feeling as emotional as I had been. True, my feelings are very guarded currently, but I'm doing okay.