The Things That Haunt Us While We Sleep
An intimate look at nightmares, insomnia, and a mind that refuses to shut the fuck up.
Do any of you have nightmares?
And I don't mean the occasional dream where you're falling off a cliff, being chased by something with too many teeth, or showing up naked to a meeting you definitely should have prepared for.
I mean real nightmares.
The kind that leave you sitting upright in bed, heart pounding against your ribs, skin damp with sweat, trying to convince yourself that what you just experienced wasn't real.
The kind that follow you into the morning.
The kind you remember years later.
I've had nightmares for as long as I can remember.
Don't get me wrong, I have trauma.
But doesn't everyone?
I don't mean to suggest that everyone's experiences are equal or that trauma affects us all in the same way. Some people carry unimaginable things. Others carry smaller wounds that somehow manage to leave equally stubborn scars.
We all have our own histories, our own ghosts, our own collections of moments that have shaped the people we've become.
And sometimes, I think those ghosts get bored waiting for us to acknowledge them during the day.
So they visit at night.
At least, that's what it feels like to me.
I've spent much of my life navigating the strange, exhausting relationship between wanting desperately to sleep and being almost entirely incapable of doing it well.
I have moderate to severe insomnia.
Which is a rather clinical way of saying that my brain is a fucking asshole after dark.
Some nights, I climb into bed exhausted.
Not just a little tired.
I'm talking about that delicious, heavy-limbed exhaustion where your muscles feel like they've finally surrendered to gravity. Your pillow is cool against your cheek, the blankets settle around your body, and everything seems perfectly positioned for a beautiful night's sleep.
I close my eyes.
I wait.
And wait.
And fucking wait.
Eventually, I open them again.
The ceiling looks exactly as it did forty-five minutes earlier.
Shocking.
I've tried all the things.
Sleep tones.
White noise.
Dark rooms.
Cool temperatures.
Breathing exercises.
The soothing sounds of rain falling against a window, ocean waves washing over a distant shoreline, and whatever frequency the internet has decided will magically convince my nervous system to cooperate.
Sometimes I lie there listening to a recording of a thunderstorm while my actual thoughts are louder than the imaginary weather.
And there I am.
Wide awake.
Thinking.
Remembering.
Wondering.
Occasionally constructing elaborate scenarios that have absolutely no business occupying my mind at two in the morning.
Did I remember to respond to that message?
Why did I say that embarrassing thing in 2009?
What if the strange noise downstairs isn't the refrigerator?
How long would it take someone to notice if I disappeared?
You know.
Normal, relaxing bedtime thoughts.
Now, before anyone rushes to point out the obvious, yes.
I drink a fuck ton of coffee.
I love coffee.
More specifically, I love espresso.
The rich, slightly bitter aroma drifting upward from a freshly pulled shot. The warmth of the cup against my palms. That first sip, when the flavor is so concentrated it practically demands your attention.
Coffee is one of my favorite little rituals.
A quiet morning.
A steaming cup.
A few precious moments before the world starts asking things of me.
And yes, I recognize the irony of someone with insomnia maintaining a deeply committed relationship with caffeine.
I'm not completely oblivious.
However, in my defense, I once gave up coffee for six entire months.
SIX.
MONTHS.
Do you understand the magnitude of that sacrifice?
Half a year without my beloved espresso.
Half a year of waking up and confronting the world without the comforting bitterness of freshly brewed coffee.
It was a nightmare in itself.
And you know what happened?
Absolutely fucking nothing.
Well, that's not entirely true.
I missed coffee.
Desperately.
But my insomnia didn't magically disappear.
Neither did my nightmares.
There was no miraculous transformation in which I suddenly became one of those people who closes their eyes at 9:30 p.m. and wakes up eight hours later feeling refreshed, rejuvenated, and suspiciously enthusiastic about life.
Nope.
Same brain.
Same nighttime nonsense.
Just significantly less coffee.
Rude.
But the insomnia is only part of the problem.
Because sometimes, when I finally do manage to fall asleep, the real adventure begins.
The nightmares.
There's something uniquely unsettling about the way dreams can manufacture entire realities without asking our permission.
One moment, you're lying safely in your bed.
The next, you're somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere your mind has created with astonishing detail.
The lighting is different.
The air feels different.
You can hear footsteps approaching, feel the texture of a wall beneath your fingertips, sense the unmistakable presence of something terrible just beyond your field of vision.
And while you're there, you believe it.
Completely.
That's the part that fascinates me.
Our brains can construct experiences so convincing that our bodies respond as though they're actually happening.
Fear becomes physical.
Your chest tightens.
Your pulse accelerates.
Your muscles tense in anticipation of something that doesn't exist outside your own sleeping mind.
And then you wake up.
Except sometimes the fear doesn't disappear when you open your eyes.
It lingers.
Like a shadow that refuses to retreat when someone turns on the light.
You know you're home.
You recognize the familiar shapes of your bedroom, the blankets tangled around your legs, the faint sounds of the house settling around you.
But your body hasn't quite caught up with reality.
Your heart is still racing.
Your breathing is shallow.
And for a few moments, you're suspended somewhere between the world you just escaped and the one you've returned to.
It's a strange thing, being frightened by something your own mind created.
Especially when you can't always explain why it frightened you so much.
I take prescribed medication intended to help reduce my nightmares.
And I find that fact interesting in itself.
Because dreams are such a peculiar part of being human.
We spend roughly a third of our lives asleep, our brains continuing their mysterious work while we're largely disconnected from the world around us.
Sometimes dreams are beautiful.
Sometimes they're absurd.
Sometimes they give us stories, memories, or feelings we can't quite explain.
And sometimes they're so disturbing that we'd rather not experience them at all.
As someone who writes murder mysteries and spends an arguably unreasonable amount of time researching the darker aspects of human behavior, I find the whole thing fascinating.
The human mind is capable of creating extraordinary things.
Art.
Music.
Literature.
Scientific discoveries.
Entire imaginary worlds.
And apparently, in my case, a rather impressive collection of unsolicited psychological horror films.
Thanks, brain.
Really appreciate the creativity.
Perhaps the strangest part of all this is that I absolutely love sleeping.
I adore it.
I cherish it.
I love the promise of climbing into a freshly made bed after a long day.
The smell of clean sheets.
The coolness of the pillow.
The gentle weight of a blanket settling over my shoulders.
The way the world seems to soften when the lights go out and the house finally becomes quiet.
There's something deeply comforting about the idea of sleep.
For a few hours, we're allowed to stop.
Stop answering questions.
Stop making decisions.
Stop being productive.
Stop carrying the endless little responsibilities that accumulate throughout the day.
We're allowed to simply exist.
No expectations.
No demands.
Just rest.
And I crave that.
I crave the surrender.
The peaceful transition from consciousness into that strange, quiet place where time seems to disappear.
I love the idea of waking up after a full night's sleep, stretching beneath warm blankets, and feeling genuinely restored.
But loving something and being good at it are apparently two very different things.
And sleep?
Sleep and I have a complicated fucking relationship.
It's almost comical.
I spend my waking hours inventing fictional murders, exploring the motivations of imaginary killers, and asking uncomfortable questions about human behavior.
Then, when it's finally time to rest, my brain seems to say:
Oh, you thought we were finished?
Absolutely not.
I've prepared an entirely new production.
And this one stars YOU.
Wonderful.
Five stars.
Would not recommend.
Still, I wonder about the relationship between our waking lives and the strange worlds we visit in our sleep.
How much of what we dream is influenced by our experiences?
Our fears?
Our memories?
Our imaginations?
And how much is simply the brain doing what brains do, assembling fragments of information into stories that don't necessarily mean anything at all?
I don't believe every nightmare holds some profound hidden message.
Sometimes a dream is just a dream.
But I do find it remarkable that our minds can make us feel so much while we're completely still.
We can experience terror without danger.
Grief without loss.
Joy without an event.
We can miss people who never existed.
We can visit places we've never been.
We can wake up mourning something that disappeared the moment we opened our eyes.
Isn't that extraordinary?
And a little fucking terrifying?
Maybe that's part of why I'm so fascinated by storytelling.
Because in some ways, dreams and fiction aren't all that different.
Both invite us into worlds that don't physically exist.
Both ask us to feel things for people who may never have lived.
Both can leave emotional impressions that linger long after the experience is over.
The difference, of course, is that when I'm writing a novel, I have at least some control over what happens next.
When I'm dreaming?
Not so much.
So here I am.
A woman who loves sleep, struggles to achieve it, and occasionally finds herself terrorized by her own imagination when she finally succeeds.
It's a ridiculous arrangement.
But it's mine.
And tonight, I'll do what I always do.
I'll climb into bed.
Pull the blankets up.
Settle my head against the pillow.
Hope for a peaceful night.
And perhaps, if the universe is feeling particularly generous, I'll drift off into eight uninterrupted hours of blissful, uneventful nothingness.
No monsters.
No terrifying scenarios.
No elaborate plots.
No imaginary danger.
Just sleep.
Beautiful, boring, glorious sleep.
Now I'm curious about you.
Do you have nightmares?
Are you one of those lucky people who falls asleep the moment your head touches the pillow?
Or are you like me, lying awake in the dark while your brain insists on hosting an unscheduled midnight conference?
And here's what I really want to know:
Do your nightmares ever stay with you long after you've woken up?
Because some of mine certainly do.
And as someone who spends her days writing about the darker corners of the human mind, I can't help but wonder what that says about the stories we carry inside ourselves.
Even when we're sleeping.
Until next time,
Chelsea C. Macdonald
Author of An Unwoven Truth