Abi: My nightmares and fears. [14/30]

I wanted to remember, today, two of the recurring nightmares from my youth.


My first repeating dream was about fire.
Mind you, I was a pseudo-pyromaniac when I was younger (ask Amanda, it kind of bothered her, apparently), with a fascination with learning how different things burn… and I just enjoyed watching fire. I spent some time nearly daily with fire in my youth, probably because it was forbidden to be played with, and also because it is just such an awe-inspiring matter.
I held no fear of these fires, but these fires were controlled, always.
My nightmare, though, were of fires I could not gain control over, or even see.
Normally it was a dark house. I keep seeing the house in Haines City but the kitchen has rotated so that it’s facing the other way.
I always seem to hear something like a fizzy noise, and then my attention is drawn to an outlet on the wall. It’s flashing a bit of blue within the socket and then I think there is a quick ignition within the wall, or some little puffs of smoke to signify that something has started to burn.
There would be a panic in the dream, there is nothing I can do in this dream. There is this blue electrical rage going through the walls.
Normally I might wake up at this point, with this wash of that dread… or if I dream on it will just suddenly be a full fledge fire, and I’m usually trying to rescue someone or something. In these dreams it’s usually my sister or my cats (I’ve not had this dream again since the children, or I’d assume it would be them).
It doesn’t sound so terrifying when I type it out, but the whole concept of an uncontrollable fire within the walls (where you can’t even see it), just stirs me…
This would later grow into a fear of fire when I lived in the apartments in Melbourne where we had this very wicked smoke detector that would go off at any time of the night (or day) and wake me up to sheer panic. Of course, there was never a fire, never smoke, but I would so frightened of there being a fire, that I found it hard to go back to sleep peacefully…
But living in an apartment, you haven’t control over your neighbours and what fucked up things they might do (like start or cause fires that will inevitably effect you as well).


I’m going to have to step in here and put a memory now, that I didn’t realise I would talk about, but fits in here, and I do aim to uncover as much as I can during this challenge (even is, obviously, my entries become tl;dr).
The handyman who came to fix the said wicked smoke detector lived in our apartments, apparently in the same building to be exact, being the apartment above us and adjacent.
When he came in to fix the smoke detector I remember how I discussed this fright to being woken up at night from it, especially when being in an apartment building can put me as risk of someone else’s negligence so that I never know if it is a false alarm or not.
Well, at the same time I had an irrational fear of the train running parallel to the apartment. I had watched something on train derailments one day (even though I think I had the fear before this, this only cemented it for me) and I pretty much assumed (and still do) that if a train derailed there that it could wipe out the outside apartments to the complex, one of which is where we lived. I ended up developing a really annoying and utterly useless OCD tick over it (pretty much, if I heard a train come I had to stop what I was doing, run to the window, and count the number of engines that were driving it, or else it might derail… *shifty eyes* YES, it makes NO sense, but it made ALL the sense to me then *cheeks flush*).
Well, at some point later on, within around a few months, someone put a pipe bomb on the railway tracks right behind the laundry mat that sat parallel to the entrance to the apartments… This was only about 100 metres, or less, from the apartments… So, there was, if only for awhile before the bomb was removed, a real chance of this train derailment happening.
In the investigation of who put that bomb there I guess the handy man for our apartments became suspect.
One day we were evacuated from our apartments by the bomb squad (I laugh because I remember Amanda had a big interest in law enforcement, and it might have been around the time she was coursing in it through the local community college. She was out there talking with one of the officers for a bit, not sure about what, but I remember she was very curious and eager to talk to them for insight).
We come to find out that this neighbour, our handyman (who I had just talked about this fear with) had in his apartment an array of explosives and guns… Like a militia stock going on up in there.
This event in my life did NOT help my fear… if anything it gave me more of a distrust in humans… and a big tilting of my head to the way that all played out.


Ah, well, on to my second reoccurring nightmare from childhood:
This one was about these black cougars (that later became black dogs, akin to the shadow dogs I used to ‘see’ running through the alley back on Avocado Street) that would come into the house.
The house in this dream was a two story house in my dreams, which I don’t ever remember living in a two storied house in my adolescent at all.
I remember the walls were white, so in the darkness, and with what little moonlight came through from the two large windows on either side of the front door, it all was tainted this pale bluish white.
I’d come to the top of the stairs and down below would be these cougars coming in door and looking up at me… or coming through the door. I don’t remember the door opening…
I had, in this dream, a knowledge that these were not just animals, but something of a token sent by a group of others. It was like a spectre of sorts, or spies, meant to startle me and maybe even hurt me, and perhaps put me in my place. I knew there was something supernatural to these creatures.
I don’t think the group had a name, or anything solid to me, but it was this fear of an unknown organization invading my life… and the dream came often…
This dream didn’t wake me in fright like the fire dream, but I would always wake up paranoid.

Wow. OCD and Paranoia. I really make myself look good, eh? *frown*