I’m having some pretty messed up dreams right now, but tonight’s was definitely the worst and most vivid. I fell asleep at around 3am, and now, two hours later, I have woken again absolutely terrified:

I am in some kind of psychiatric unit, but it is different to any psychiatric unit I have ever been in in real life. In this unit I am being looked after by some very nurturing, motherly African women. Here, they don’t use pills to get people to sleep. They use old-fashioned touch. I am lovingly rubbed and kissed to sleep by one of the nurses. I start to drift off, but not all is well outside. I overhear the nurse saying that the Crisis Assessment Team are having a particularly rough night, and while they usually send patients here, they are trying to keep this particular one away. Then one of the other patients jumps through the window and runs. The nurse then tells us that a disturbed person with a gun is outside. We turn the lights off and lie very still and quiet, praying they don’t come into the ward and kill us. But we have a baby with us and the baby is making sounds. The man with the gun opens the door of the ward and shoots the baby and one of the nurses. I struggle with him to try and get the gun off him. He then points it at me and bam, I wake up. It takes me a while to figure out where I am.

I usually like to understand the meaning behind dreams, but I have no idea what the fuck this dream was about. It was such a strange contrast between something really nice and something awful. I still have a headache and am terrified. I’m terrified before I fall asleep (I get nocturnal panic attacks and paranoia), and I’m terrified when I wake up. I think the dream is just a reflection of how fucking terrified and touch-starved I am right now. Lack of touch has been known to increase stress, depression and anxiety. I’m actually not really big on touch usually, but I think the lack of it is slowly eating away at me and causing all kinds of problems.

Anyhoo, that’s tonight’s night. They’re all pretty fucked, and I think my sleep issues are making me a bit batty. My stomach feels like it’s filled with a zillion butterflies thrashing about. My head feels like it’s been slammed against a brick wall. I’m so over this.