When nightmares hit too close to reality.

A rare, second long-form article from me this week.

Since the conclusion of the 2024 United States presidential elections, now soon-to-be three weeks ago, folks on Mastodon have shared that their nights are being plagued by nightmares.

Me? All I've had to struggle with so far was the return of a persistent insomnia, the likes I've not seen in ages. But, at least, when I do get to sleep, I sleep dreamless. Even if I do dream, I rarely remember anything once I wake.

Not so last night.

I had my first nightmare related to all the events unfolding in the US and the world. It was horrible, and I remember the whole, damn thing.

In the nightmare, my partner Max and I were in a country that was on the verge of war. War from external invading forces, or from internal forces seizing control, the nightmare did not specify; though it felt like both.

All we knew was we needed to get out, and we had been writing letters (actual, handwritten letters, interestingly) to folks overseas for months, begging them to help us escape.

The nightmare took place early one night. We had not received any reply from anyone we had written to, and news on the street was that things were getting worse, fast.

We felt that we could not wait any longer, so we had packed everything we could and was ready to go that very night. However, we were hungry and decided to quickly run out to our local markets to grab some take-out to throw down.

Then, it started.

Fucking Transformer-like entities, or maybe they were human-operated mechas, I have no idea, suddenly dropped down from the sky into our neighbourhood and started killing everyone and destroying everything.

Our local armed forces had already been patrolling the streets for some time, so they were on hand, but it was chaos.

Within minutes, and before my brain could even process that shit was happening, one of the machines got hurled by an explosion straight into the side of the building where we lived, pretty much taking out out our entire apartment, along with several of our neighbours'.

As I watched the concrete crumble like sand two storeys to the ground, all I could do was raise my hands to my head and scream, "It just HAD to be OUR apartment, hadn't it? WHY OUR apartment?!"

Max was already yanking on my arm, yelling at me to, "Stop it!" and pulling me at a run towards our crumbling home: We had to go now and salvage whatever we could.

We sprinted the 100 metres or so back to our building, and scrabbled our way up through the debris. Luckily, our apartment wasn't as crushed as I'd thought it was, though our belongings were now strewn everywhere, some bags ripped open, others under concrete, all covered in a thick coat of concrete dust.

I had no time to think about what to pick; I had to just grab whatever I laid eyes on, and stuff it all into the one bag I could find that was still useable. I did remember to grab my wallet and my computer.

Then we ran. It was deafening. Screaming. Crashing. Shouts. The sounds of big, automatic weapons firing that I don't even know what they are. Sounds of explosions going off, near and far. Lights flashing. The stench of burning.

Now I truly understand what it means when they say a war zone is like hell breaking loose. I don't think the human brain is designed to handle experiencing destruction the likes that war brings.

We didn't get far though. As we rounded a corner, a machine landed before us and pointed its weapons at another group of survivors that had just been attempting to flee down the same street we were about to enter.

I don't remember the exact words, but the gist is this: Drop everything you are carrying, and we won't kill you.

The sense I got was: They wanted our belongings. All of it. They didn't want us, but they wanted what we owned, because it was valuable.

In the mere seconds that exchange took, we felt guns at our back. We were caught, too, and herded out to join the others.

The machine, or person manning the machine, which happened to be female, repeated her orders: Drop your possessions and come quietly with us, or get shot.

In the silence that followed, I saw everyone around me clutch their belongings tighter. Most of the men in the groups looked like they were debating in their heads whether or not to fight, if they could fight, if they should fight back, weaponless against overwhelming odds before them.

I heard the sounds of guns being lifted and readied. I looked up at Max, who also had the same look on his face, like he was ready to kill someone to get us out of here, yet was wrestling against hopelessness inside. I think he noticed me looking up at him and he looked down at me.

All I could do was smile sadly, and with a shrug, I dropped my bags. Thud. And at that sound, slowly, everyone did the same. The sounds of bags hitting the ground, one by one, was the most... despairing sound I have ever heard in my life.

Then, we were led away.

That was when I started to cry (in the nightmare). There, in the darkness of the night, walking in a row along with everyone else, I wept as I was led away to what I knew could only get worse from here.

It was my crying in real life that woke me up, the heaving of my chest and the wheezing of air caught in my throat as I choked in my sleep.

I was barely awake as I snapped my blankets back, and leapt out of bed, as if just staying there was going to bring me back to that place. I fled into the living room where Max was sitting, already awake some hours before.

It is now hours later, and I am still deeply affected by what is technically just a dream. It "wasn't real", but what I experienced in the dream, can't be that far removed from what people in war zones the world over, from Sudan, to Ukraine, and Gaza, are experiencing right now.

Then there is the part where the aggressors stripped us of our belongings for their own gain. The parallel with what happened in the Holocaust extermination camps is chilling.

I expect my nightmare to pale in comparison to reality. Yet it was already horrifying and terrifying beyond belief. Can a person be traumatized by a nightmare, I wonder?

I keep replaying the part of the dream where I screamed, "It "It just HAD to be OUR apartment, hadn't it? WHY OUR apartment?!"

Just thinking about it makes me cringe in shame at how selfish it sounded. In the dream, my neighbors' homes were also blasted to bits, but I didn't think to think about them at all in that moment.

All I could think about at that moment was: We had worked so hard to get everything ready to get out of the country, and now life just had to deal us that blow. That one extra blow. Like a fuck you with a laugh.

Of course, not that it mattered in the end: We lost everything, anyway.

Now, as waking me and in actual reality where this did not happen, it is making me reflect on so many things.

1. As waking me now, it is easy to judge dream me as being selfish.
   
   Yet, I had just experienced what was to me a genuine war situation.
   
   In an actual war situation, what is selfish, and what isn't? Isn't this judgement of "selfishness" just coming from the privilege of not being in a war situation? A holier-than-thou removal from the reality of hell-on-earth?
   
   Is this how folks who have never been a war situation judge those who have?
2. Survival is selfish.
   
   I don't need to be in a war situation to know that. Just having gone through decades of compounding complex traumas and abusive situations is enough to teach me that selfishness is needed to survive.
   
   This selfishness can cause survivors to turn against one another just when they need each other the most (once again, that holier-than-thou perspective) but what can we do against the evolutionary pressures of our nervous system?
3. Seeing—living!—the visceral realities of the war in my nightmare caused me, for a moment, to feel like everything I'm currently trying to do is a joke.
   
   Against all that... the utter, wanton destruction of actual, human lives. Desecration of homes, families, memories.
   
   What can be done to prevent that? To stop those who would want that? What can one (disadvantaged and disabled with chronic health) person do?

I also keep thinking about the part where I was the first one to drop my bags.

• Right or wrong thing to do? Would it have mattered?
• Would it have been better to just die then?

It was just a dream, and I still feel horrible. Likely because it hits too close to home. I clung to Max extra hard afterwards. He didn't dismiss it as "just a dream", for the same reasons.

It's just... too close to possibility right now.

Thank you, brain, for processing this subterranean terror in such a visceral way. 🙄

I... am going to go eat some mochi now.