On Demons

Most of the time, when I reference demons, I am referring to the ingrained agreements I have made about myself that surface as negative self talk or sabotage. However since my horrible slasher movie nightmare, I have been considering other types, or, at least, other manifestations.

I contemplated recounting the nightmare in vivid detail, partly as a tribute to Dooce and over-sharing about poop. Then I thought, perhaps one live and one journalled recounting satisfied the need for storytelling while saving a little face for me and some awkward discomfort for you. Besides how could I know if you'd be eating while you read the blog, and that would just be rude.

There are two elements that I will share. I have been thinking of it as X Files meets Bones with a Slasher movie quality. I will let you make up for yourselves what pieces of the X Files will meet Bones; but you can rest assured, it was not only scary, it was disgusting. Slasher movie quality in the sense that as I "watched" the dream happen in my mind, it was like watching a naive person about to get hacked who didn't know it at all...and when I say watched, I mean it was both me experiencing being the person with no idea what was about to happen and me as spectator of the dream ... yeah, it was something else.

In another odd note, while I was dreaming, I started to try to control the outcome. At each turn, whenever there was an inkling of danger or just a problem, my mind thought, "I can fix this!" And the dream would change, morph in front of my very eyes...but then another danger or problem would surface. Undaunted until the very end, I believed I could fix it. Until the demon was chasing me, that is... then I remember saying to myself in my head, if not in the dream, "Open your eyes..." because I knew this would end the nightmare.

If nothing else, this dream explains why I am always so exhausted when I wake up ... it is more than just dreaming, it is mental and emotional participation

An interesting aspect for me, is that, in the nightmare, the demon took humanoid form. I almost never have nightmares that involve real physical danger. Usually, I awaken crying because some situation has upset me. Once I was trapped and felt physical danger in that sense, but usually it is just a series of tasks that I must perform, generally to save someone else or fix a situation. I am scared because I feel incompetent or just overwhelmed.

This dream was very different. At the end I was very frightened. I even got out of my bed and checked around everywhere to see if the demon was physically present and hiding somewhere in my apartment. Oh...and for several days, I had an irrational fear of bathrooms, any bathroom... though I kept talking myself into using them by saying that they didn't look like the one in the dream.

What does this mean?

I have had millions of anxiety dreams. But this dream had anxiety not as a task to be solved but as a real threat, in this case bodily.

I contemplated the possibility this was some religious revenge for saying I don't pray or believe in that kind of institution.

Frightened as I was, I did comfort myself with *prayer* - with the caveat that this was just the sort of occasion I objected to using prayer for... you know when you are in desperate need rather than part of a daily practice where you might include a little gratitude once in a while.

But in my prayer, I was making clear I had not questioned the existence of the divine in the form of a god or the universe, just rejected the notion of allegiance or authority. Even in my frightened state, I was having a conversation with god, not necessarily desperately entreating...

I was surprised by the fear and the sense of helplessness and the need and desire for a way to get comfort.

I am glad to have it past me... it has taken me a while to really believe it was just a dream.