dreamcatcher

just a few inches from the foot of my bed, a pair of neon eyes reflecting the glow of my laptop stare at me through the darkness. once upon a time this would have scared the life out of me, but tonight i know them to be the watchful eyes of a cat who has lost his place on the bed because of a selfish dog who barely makes room for his master, let alone his rival.

i hear the quiet pitter patter of his gentle steps as he leaves the room to find sleep elsewhere in the house. it reminds me of a recurring night terror i've had for nearly a year now. in my dream, i wake to find a man lying behind me in the bed whispering into my ear all of the ways he's going to harm me. i can feel his breath on my neck. his chest rises and falls against my back with every breath he takes. near the foot of the bed i sense another man standing and watching. my rational mind starts to race, trying to remember the details of all those episodes of law and order svu i've had playing in the background while i pay bills or do homework.

a noise downstairs causes the men to leave in a hurry. i can hear their shoes pass against the carpet as they leave the room then race down the stairs. as i wake from the dream i wonder if i've heard the door slam shut downstairs or not. i lie there paralyzed by fear, not able yet to decipher what is real and what was only in my head. every time it's the same.

the recurring nightmares came to me very early on. the first i remember was when i was a little girl. similar to shel silverstein's poem 'the googies are coming', in my dream i would wake up to the sound of laughter outside my window. i'd look through the window to find a woman riding through the sky on a broom, carrying a large sack filled with kicking and screaming children. she'd catch me looking at her and select me as her next target. i'd always awake before she reached the window, but i still see the image sometimes when i visit my parents and sleep in that room again.

this last week some of my friends were on campus for a week-long intensive graduate class. while walking pete one day i ran into a classmate who said she was so glad that i had such a dog since i was a young woman living alone. she's not the first to make that type of comment. my initial reaction is to get defensive. i don't need a dog. i don't need a man. i'm perfectly fine out here in the world on my own! but i will say, that on those nights when the night terrors kick in, it's nice to have pete there when i wake up to remind me which world is real. pete wouldn't let a visitor go unnoticed, and he sure wouldn't let a man assault me.

sometimes i wonder if i would do well to get a dreamcatcher to hang over my bed. dreamcatchers originated with the chippewa tribes of native americans many moons ago. legend tells us that the web catches the bad dreams and holds them until daylight, when they perish. the good dreams, however, pass through the center of the web and slide down the feathers to delight the slumbering child below.

i'm not a child anymore, but the dreams have only matured along with my age. pete helps, but maybe a dreamcatcher is in order. or maybe it's time to figure out where the root of these dreams originates. maybe my kind of dreamcatcher is in the form of a counselor. one way or another, these terrors have got to stop.