Where Do Nightmares Come From

~ Gottfried

Everyone hates getting flashbacks from things they don’t want to remember. That’s why you need to delete memories. Complacency is the mother of all nightmares. All nightmares are real. Believe in everything until it’s disproved. So believe in fairies, myths, and dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? Monsters don’t live under your bed, they live inside your head.

Only happy people have nightmares. From overeating. There are people with repetitive nightmares. What happens is you’re stressed. Then your brain tries to deal with the stress. As your brain tries to anticipate the stress and deal with it, the stress becomes so scary you’re awoken from it. That’s why you keep getting chased by a giant donut. And you wake up screaming “don’t eat me!” All this while your brain is doing it’s best to remind you that donuts can’t actually eat you.

Don’t ignore dreams. They are a line from the past to the future. Do you ever wake up from an amazing dream and try to go back to sleep? Hoping there would be a sequel? Why don’t you try that with nightmares? Scaredy-cat! I was having a bad dream once, so I woke up! Thing is, there will be nightmares. And every day when you wake up, it will be the first thing you think about. Until one day, it’ll be the second thing. You’ll be married.

A nightmare is a big dream with a bad team. My best dreams and worst nightmares have the same people in them. One minute they’re fighting with me as we attempt to end yet another world war with bows and arrows. The next minute they’re selling me off to the undead. Now when I wake up, I’m eyeing them from the corner of my eye. These psychos sold me out for a bucket of chicken. Even the Lord himself got sold for thirty pieces of silver.

The freaky thing about nightmares is realizing that they were created by your mind. You did that, you really did that! Those green goblins chasing you around the house are entirely your own imagination. You created them. It’s a movie and you’re Steven Spielberg. I wonder if film directors wake up screaming “Cut! Cut! Cut!” when they have nightmares. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death. Don’t wake up!

If you read my mind, I’m pretty sure you’ll be traumatized for life. That, or you’ll want to punch me in the face every five minutes. No in-betweens. The truth is that we’re all in the same game, just different levels. Dealing with the same hell; just different devils. I still have nightmares about taking tests. And in every single one of them, my pen stops working and I start sweating profusely. Even after I borrow my colleague’s pen, it wouldn’t still work. Funny thing, in the nightmare I’m also the examiner.

Kids are scared of nightmares. Why? Well, it’s because they can’t take their parents with them. I took my daughter out to lunch once. The waiter asks my daughter, “what would you like.” Daughter says, “I want to devour the unborn.” The waiter looks at me and I say, “eggs, she wants eggs.” No one has more on their to-do list than a toddler at bedtime. It’s your job to remind them that nothing can take the fear away. But they’ll find a way to live with it. You might want to do away with the teddy bears, it hastens the process.

What if your pillow collected your dreams and you could plug it into your laptop and watch them over again? Man, if this happened I’d have put Netflix out of business. Elon Musk’s idea of playing music straight to our brains doesn’t even sound crazy anymore. Most of the geniuses to have walked the earth often times have dark twisted minds. The darkness is what makes our minds create. You also create your best work in the dark. Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Homer, etc

You never know how crazy a person is till they tell you their nightmares. You listen to some people’s stories and shudder. One half of you hoping the entire thing is made up, the other half entertained. On the whole, nightmares are a gift. You see, the person is being forced awake to look at an issue that they have been avoiding. Funny how we forget the good times while the nightmares haunt us. Guess that’s a survival mechanism. We’re not here to be happy. We’re just here…

to be here

© Gottfried. All rights reserved

598 thoughts on “Where Do Nightmares Come From”

  1. Until one day, it’ll be the second thing. You’ll be married.

    This one got me. I also see what you did with that Lil Wayne line. Clever mf

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  2. It can’t be weird that I haven’t had a nightmare in over 10 years. I mean the Freddie Krueger type.
    It is always ‘A Good time’ or A Better time’.

    I see dreams as an alternate dimension existing in parallel to the human world. Now I sound like Dustin in Stranger Things 😅.

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  3. Re: your dream about taking exams and the pen not working. I have very similar dream about something horrible happening and I’m trying to call for help but keep pressing incorrect numbers, getting the sequence mixed up or don’t press one button hard enough or press it too hard and add extra digits all I do is dial and dial but never manage to actually dial the right number.  

    Another is where I’m back on night shifts at the care home I used to run and have fallen asleep in one of the lounges (only one waking night staff at the time)
    I wake up and realise I’ve been flat out for hours and half the residents are dead either in bed or face down on the floor from where they fell trying to get themselves up to the bathroom. I can’t answer or come up with any excuse because the injuries and post mortems will show they’ve all been dead for hours. 

    In my concious mind and the real world, I’d never immediately start thinking of how to lie my way out of trouble so to be concerned about nothing else in my dream is bizarre.

    Over time I’ve learned to recognise when I’m in a nightmare and either wake myself up or play around with it I’m a very lucid dreamer.  

    Sometimes it catches me out and becomes a full blown nightmare but more often than not I have that “Hang on..  This is a dream.  Yeah it is I’ve had this loads of times and bet if I push up hard from my toes I can get up on that roof.  Haha see?!  Screw you asshole it’s only a dream!!!” 

    Love it when I win in those dreams 😀

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    1. Okay your second dream scared me a bit. I want my mommy 😢

      It’s true, the only way out is usually to wake yourself up.

      I love it when I win too. Like haha jokes on you, I’m about to get shot at then I wake up

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      1. Yeah I tend to have really dark dreams like that usually concerning something or someone I’m responsible for and fail on every level but I guess that’s a pretty common if not natural thing most of us have. 

        For months after my Dad died I was tormented every night where he showed up looking awful and gaunt / in a wheelchair but trying to be upbeat and telling me how they said he should only need another round of chemo and he’ll be good.
        Every night I had to tell him “Dad – there’s no more chemo you died and you have to stop doing this to me”  Ended up shouting at him – properly effing and jeffing that he was dead, there’s no chemo and I didn’t want to see him or have him come tell me about chemo again.  His face was destroyed. It was just devastation from realising he was dead and me telling him to fu@k off and leave me alone.

        Best thing was the dream where I was at the old place I used to keep horses and my Dad was there but looking like he did when I was a kid.   

        Knew it was a dream but gave him such a big hug and could smell him – the overpowering aftershave, freshly lit cigarette and I took in huge lungfuls of that smell and asked why he hadn’t shown up like this before cos he’d been scaring me to death.

        Without missing a beat he cut me short and said in a stern tone “Hey no no no – don’t you put that on me Lottie. I kept trying to come see you but didn’t want to keep pushing or frightening you.   Had to wait until you were ready”

        Never had another nightmare since and when I do dream about him, it’s always a fleeting few mins but he’ll tell me which horses he fancies to win at Cheltenham or Grand National, is always on his way to the pub and heads off with “Reight love I’m off say hello to Sparks and Tin Pot Lids!” (Mark and the kids)

        Weird how dreams seem to work out and deal with what we’re not able to deal with when awake 🙂 

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          1. I do wonder if the place we met was something my brain (or maybe Dad) decided was a good spot where subconsciously I’d feel safe and reassured because it held such fond childhood memories.  

            The weekend after that dream we went wandering with the dogs back to that very same place I’d not visited in over 20yrs it was so weird standing by the field gate almost able to see Dad and going “He was here – like RIGHT HERE on this spot!!”

            Mark “I am struggling to picture your Dad standing in a field – in any time, place or world”

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  4. I think the movies you watch last just spill into your dreams. Last time it was I and Bruce Willis jumping helicopters and taking on mafians. He even called my Igbo name.

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  5. Sometimes dreams be weird man. Not scary, not sweet.
    Just weird that I WTF out of it and I can’t wait for that pillow 😌
    Your daughter is a gurl after my heart😁.

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  7. “The truth is that we’re all in the same game, just different levels. Dealing with the same hell; just different devils.”
    I LOVED THIS LINE!!!
    lovely piece. i laughed at some bits. the comics were hilarious!!
    love always,
    [gotw}

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