Nightmares and "The Wall"

I was laying down to put my son to bed and fell asleep awhile ago. I woke up from this nightmare that left me feeling terrible. I was kind of feeling bad already. I haven’t had a nightmare in a long time, though I had them frequently growing up.

I dreamt that I was driving a long secluded highway in my town. It was dark and icy, the road only going in one direction. As I was driving I noticed it was getting darker and darker. I slowed down and asked the people in the car, “Am I going crazy? I can’t see anything in front of me!” They said no, they couldn’t see anything either. It felt almost as if the dark were totally enveloping me in an eerie way, a claustrophobic way, like it was alive and I was trapped. I was driving so slowly because I didn’t want to go off the side of the road into the ditch or the other side into a ravine. Suddenly I noticed something in the road and slammed on the breaks. It was a huge 4x4 just lying there. I could barely get around it without going off the side and wrecking. Once I passed it all I could think of was getting to a point where I could cross and get to the other side of the road safely. As I was driving I saw another 4x4 and passed it, then another and passed it. It seemed like I was going even faster. There were more and more and then there was a huge pile of them blocking the road. I could only tell at the last minute and I swerved out of the way and went over the side of the ravine. My last thought was about the people in the car with me and hoping that they lived. It was complete blackness and there was nothing but the sensation of falling.

Luckily I woke up then. At times in nightmares like this, I don’t awake. Instead, I experience the impact, or drowning, or whatever it may be, and die. Then it’s as if I rise out of my body, trapped inside the dream. It’s a horrible feeling. As it was tonight, I felt extremely groggy and then realized my son was lying next to me, but the disgusting feeling remained.

I’m really feeling down anyway, and I think it’s in part because I think so much and come to these realizations about things that I just, frankly, don’t want to admit. It’s usually big things like the meaning of life, love, our experiences in this world, etc. Sometimes there really is a futility to it all that is hard to get around. It doesn’t do any good to cry about it, a lot of times it doesn’t do any good to even care about it. I’m tired of being cynical about life and feeling detached from everything. I want to care, and I think the truth is that I do care very intensely, but it never does me any good, so I eventually stop and put up “The Wall”. Living behind “The Wall” is better than being affected by all this stuff. It’s a weird place to be though, and accepting that you live behind “The Wall” can be incredibly depressing if you actually allow yourself to think about it. Most of the time I try not to. Every once in awhile I tell myself to come out from behind “The Wall” so that I can feel like a human being, but I think ultimately I see that it isn’t worthwhile to, and then I just retreat again.