Zander's Inside Voice

I slept terribly last night. I take Clonidine for nightmares because they used to be so bad that I didn’t want to go to sleep. I didn’t want to take any medication for a long time because I wasn’t sure how I would react to it. But eventually I wasn’t sleeping well most of the week, only getting 2-3 full nights of sleep. The lack of sleep was hard but the nightmares were harder. And so back in June, I finally told the NP that I needed something. And it’s working!

I do still have bad dreams sometimes, but they are not like the nightmares at all. It’s more realistic stuff, less zombies and airplane crashes. But last night was nuts. I was doing soccer practice, sending emails, cleaning up around the house, and all kinds of other weird things for dreams, but normal life things.

I’ve always had really vivid dreams. My parents always made fun of me like I was exaggerating the dreams. They picked at me when I told them about some of my dreams, so I stopped telling them my dreams. And everything else. My bad dreams have always been a lot too. It’s all just so vivid in my head and I really don’t like it. It’s very difficult to sleep when I felt like I was working, in class, doing chores, whatever it was.

The dreams I love are the ones where I get to fly, see family and friends that have died, or relive something I really enjoyed. Those dreams are the very best. I have some ability to adjust bad dreams to make them not so bad, lucid dreaming. But generally I can’t seem to make good dreams start. I only can make them better once they do start.

Hopefully tonight I won’t have anything so vivid that it keeps waking me up because it feels so real. Real life when I am awake is enough. I don’t want to deal with all of that in my sleep as well.