Nightmare Therapy
I had a nightmare this morning that was so intense it caused me to wake up screaming. The last time I recall that happening is when I was a very small child. It woke Rob up too and he gave me a good squeeze while I shook off the terror, just in time for the alarm to start buzzing. No hitting the snooze bar for me this morning as there was no way I was going to be able to fall back asleep.

The dream was an odd take on my usual drowning dreams. Every time I dream that I'm drowning, I always realize in the dream that I'm breathing and I then think "This is impossible and therefore I must be dreaming," at which point I wake up. No big deal and I rarely feel scared when I wake up. I can usually figure out later what it is in my waking life that I feel is "drowning" me and depending on the situation I can either change things or decide it's not really such a big deal and stop worrying about it. The drowning dreams go away only to return the next time I'm in that sort of mind frame about something.

But this dream was a whole different ball of wax. For one thing, I wasn't alone (and I'm always alone in my recurring drowning dreams.) Instead, I was in a car with my mom. She was driving in one of those typical Central Texas flash flood situations and we came over a hill to see the water across the road. She sensibly stopped before the water, but then a crest of water came down the river and before she could back up to get further away the car was washed into the river. As the car sunk and started getting knocked around, I looked over at my mom to find her unconscious and wondered how in the hell I was going to get us out of this. The car had power windows and I couldn't find anything in the car that would break a window with that kind of water pressure against it. And even if I could break a window, an unconscious person is going to drown long before we could get to the surface, even if we could get to the surface. And should we manage to surface, it's almost impossible to get to land from the middle of a raging river in a flash flood situation. No hope of rescue since we were in a remote area and I was certain no one had seen the car wash into the river. Interestingly enough, I wasn't in a complete panic in the dream, but apparently other parts of my mind weren't so calm and I woke myself up screaming.

I've never had this dream before and I'm not sure exactly what it means. But I suspect it has to do with the fact the my mom is going to die at some point and there's nothing I can do about it. I've always thought I was pretty accepting of that fact, but perhaps I'm not so comfortable with it after all.

And despite the horrible start to the day, it was one of the better ones at work even with the usual parade of crabby, rude Saturday callers. One caller even remarked, with an incredulous tone in his voice, "You sound so happy!" after I answered the phone. No way I was going to 'fess up that it's my tricks of the trade that make it sound that way. But yes, I am one of the happiest, most cheerful, enthusiastic, reassuring and sympathetic call center employees you might ever have answering your call. If camera phones ever come into being, I'm not worried since I look the part too (which is why I sound the part.) But it's nothing more than acting and while it's not the easiest thing to do day after day, it's possible to pull it off most of the time. For some reason it was easier today; maybe that nightmare got some darkness out of my system.