Night Terrors...

I learned the term "Night Terrors" recently. Until I heard it, I never had a word or a real way to describe what used to happen to me when I lived in my last town and last house. I used to have episodes (dreams I suppose but they seemed to be so real) where I imagined people wandering around in my house. They would try to steal my money or my checkbook or credit cards. At the time, money was a huge point of stress in my life. I was so deep in debt and so behind on payments.

On night, in real life, I had a stranger knock on the door in the middle of the night. They were fairly innocent, asked for directions. Asked to use the phone which I refused. But the fact that they knocked at three am scared the hell out of me. For months afterwards, I would wake in the morning sure that someone had been at the door again, sure that I had talked to them. At times, even sure that they had been in my home and staring at me while I was in bed.

Oh, these episodes scared me. I think the biggest thing was the absolute feeling that the events were real. Even though I had been asleep in bed for the past eight hours.

I would wake in the morning at four or five or ten-whatever time I needed to wake for work-bathed in sweat and scared out of my mind.

When I was laid off and moved back to home, I never had the dream/episode again. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was part of the reason I was scared to live alone again.... I was worried the terrors would come back.

Interesting, isn't it? Some people are scared of spiders and snakes, monsters, lions and tigers and bears...Oh MY! I was scared of people. Not even people who were espeically scary to look at or talk to. Just people. The mind is a strange thing sometimes. All I know is that it was the scariest six months of my life.

I heard the term night terror again today and it got me thinking about that time. Thank god it's over. Four years have come and gone and those scary feelings have gone away.