giving myself bootstraps

I'm walking down the street talking to someone. I'm sitting quietly, minding my own business. I'm all alone in my house. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man with a knife or a gun appears, a large, imposing man. Or he breaks into the house and starts to fight with me. Or it's a very large and mean and hungry animal, poised to eat me. Or a huge angry monster is chasing me. The edges of my heart curl up in terror while a drum beat resonates through my body. My breathing becomes heavy and labored. My movements slow down and eventually, I'm frozen, unable to move, unable to save myself.

I wake up, eyes wide, heart beating out a steady loud rhythm. I turn on the light. I'm afraid to go back to sleep lest the job be finished. I worry that someone evil is in the room with me, or maybe in the house. I'm in terrible danger. I don't understand where it came from or where it is right now. Several hours later, if I'm lucky, I go back to sleep. I'm shaken, feeling bearly alive, feeling like I've survived something important, but only so that I can be thrown back in for more of the same treatment. The next day, I'm on edge, certain that the dream will continue, only in real life.

In my late twenties and early thirties, I had this dream and its infinite variations over and over again, sometimes once a week, sometimes more often.

In the beginning, I'd lie in bed terrified. I couldn't manage any other response. After many of these dreams, I'd obsessively replay the events. I'd be terrified. I still wouldn't go to sleep for hours.

Then a survival mechanism kicked in. One early manifestation was to carefully note the lead-up so that I could be better prepared the next time this happened. (Of course, my very creative mind always invented new means of torture.)

One night, as I was trying to relax my breathing, I started to think about the lead-up and how I could have responded differently. I revisited each part of the dream, nearly frame by frame, to discover a break in the logic, to find something I could have done or said to change the outcome. I looked at whether I could have argued, tricked the perpetrator, reacted with charm, or just run away.

And then magic happened. My creative mind did replay a dream. I responded (very meekly the first time), the outcome changed, and when I awoke terrified, I evaluated and decided how else I could have reacted. It turned out that I had many opportunities to practice, sometimes with the same dream, sometimes with more terrifying variations.

As I learned to respond in a more self-preserving way, those dreams tapered off. Eventually, they stopped visiting me at all.

I still have nightmares, but they're far more benign. In a recent one, Robert and I were on a plane which was about to crash -- a mechanical failure. I realized in the dream that I had no control over the situation except my response in our last few seconds together. There was a moment of pure love. Just before impact, I woke up terrified, yes, but also at peace, knowing that no rerun was necessary.