Psychotic Episodes and Dream Sequences

The nightmare account prompted some reveries about past nocturnal intermissions. My whole life has been plagued by exquisitely vivid dreams. My loving wife has been pretty much the victim here, awakened countless times in our thirty-some years of marriage by anything from deep throated growls, to blood curdling screams, to guffaws of incontrollable laughter. She usually has to remind me or ask what has happened to produce these reactions. I often provide sober explanations but as often as not, my responses have been quite incoherent as the dream continues vivid into my waking moments.

One night in Ruth, I awoke her by switching on the light and yanking books off the shelf next to my side of the bed. This one was accompanied by the growls of a man with a mission. When she asked me what provoked this sudden urge to house clean, I responded, “That raccoon is tearing up my books…” then in response to her further query, I explained that a raccoon had taken up residence in the book shelves and had begun to damage the precious volumes. I was furious and then fell back to sleep.

On another night, I hurled myself out of bed and turned on the overhead lights and then began to search beneath the large modern art painting that hung above our bed. I responded to her query by telling her that I had discovered a nest of black widows beneath the painting and was going to clean them out. Of course, she pointed out lucidly that the lights had been out. How could I have spotted the venomous arachnids with no light. “Ah, I responded, just a dream,” and lulled myself back to sleep. My beloved, lay in the dark haunted by the irrational, “What if?”

Some of my dreams have no explanation whatever and include hysterical loud screams and I only recall that someone was pursuing me. In one of these, my shout was so vociferous that it harmed my vocal chords and they hurt for several days after. These always freak out my sweetheart and she winds up attempting to calm my troubled soul.

One night, I sat up bolt right and began to thrash through the covers. She got up and asked what I was doing. Realizing that I had been awakened from a nightmare, I simply responded, “Aw nothing, just snakes.”