My name is Gretta. I don’t like to sleep. I dread going to sleep every night. You see, I have this dream. The same dream every night with minor variations. I remember my dream because it happens right before I wake up in the mornings. Each morning. Every morning. The dream isn’t bad. I should say it wasn’t bad in the past, but it was a little disconcerting. Now, it’s bad. I still have the same dream even though, now, there is no reason I should have it. It makes me feel like I’ve been hypnotized.
Yes, I know this sounds confusing. I guess I should try to explain except I’m not sure I can. I think I probably was hypnotized, although that isn’t the right word. Brainwashed. That’s the right word. So I have this dream and it seems real. Sometimes for as much as ten or fifteen minutes after I wake up. I have dreams, just like everyone else, that I never remember afterwards. This dream is different.
I’m trying to delay telling you about the dream. I don’t like to talk about it. I’ve never told anyone about it except the other person who is in the dream, but he’s gone now. I think if I talk about it, maybe it will go away. Here goes.
Some background. There was a man in my life for awhile. That ended and it ended badly. Very badly for me compliments of him. But that’s another story. That man is in my dream. I had this dream while we were seeing each other and it has continued since. Probably because I was brainwashed.
It’s a simple dream. I dream that this man is lying beside me. We’re holding hands. His hand feels so real to me that I’m convinced he’s really there. It’s like living in an alternate reality. Then, I wake up. I still feel his hand grasping mine. I continue to lie there, sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes, actually wondering why I feel his hand in mine. I know it isn’t real, but why does it feel so real even when I am wide awake.
I get out of bed. For a time afterward, it haunts me. Not so much the dream, but the feeling. Why do I keep having the dream and more importantly, why do I keep having the feeling of his hand grasping mine?
Do you see why I don’t like to sleep?
Any feelings associated with the dream have long since gone. They are dead, buried by the ashes of my relationship with the man in the dream. I don’t even like the feeling of his hand grasping mine any more. He showed himself to be a mentally ill psychopath. Even at that, it took some time for me to get over my own feelings for this man. Once I found out what he had done, it was a relatively quick process. Within a few months, I was over the relationship or as over a relationship as you can ever get when someone sets out to systematically gain your love and trust and then, on purpose, figures out and acts on a plan to crush you.
Why did he do this rather than just tell me the relationship wasn’t working for him? You’d have to ask him. I suspose because he is, indeed, a psychopath.
I’m left with this dream that wants to pass for reality. Every day, I tell myself it is not reality and will never be reality again because I will never allow that to happen. The dream does not go away. Can a situation, a relationship, damage your subconscious to the point where you can’t shake it from your subconscious?
I guess I need help with this. You don’t get over brainwashing easily. I would do just about anything if I could wake up just one morning without having had this damn dream. I would love to like to sleep again. Peacefully.
The Write Scribe 