Readers, I'd be interested in your comments or analysis, if any:

Another nightmare last night (I tend to have nightmares and night terrors on occasion due to my PTSD).

In this dream, I was in a bedroom of an unfamiliar house. I was with my adopted mom, Shirley, and we were napping. Suddenly, we heard a loud racket downstairs in the basement. Someone was throwing things around and making scary banging noises. Mom was lethargic and didn't want to do anything about it, but I was immediately on alert and rushed to shut and lock the door. I told her she needed to get up, and get up NOW, because someone could mean us harm.

Eventually, she pulled herself off the bed and helped me brace the door with our bodies. By that time, someone was pushing the door open (the lock must've broken). I had my back to the door, pushing with all my might, and Mom was in front of me, trying to help.

Fear trickled through my veins and I was trying to scream, to yell, to make noise -- to tell her to push harder, not to let them in. But my voice wouldn't go louder than a whisper, and when I tried to yell, only a breathy utterance came out.

I've had this happen with my voice in other dreams recently. I'll try to yell because I'm in danger, and my voice won't go above being weak and whispery, with some of the words not even coming out so they can be heard at all. It's complete terror to be in danger and not to be able to scream or alert others of your plight.

Lots to unpack about this dream, but the voice thing is a new addition to the frequent dream theme of being lost in an airport, huge warehouse, or on a college campus where I'm supposed to know the way, but get lost over and over and can't find my way out or back to where I feel safe.

If I don't take my Trazodone, the dreams are worse and much, much scarier. My imagination runs wild in my dreams, and everything's intense and in full Technicolor.

The other night, I woke up and was scared to death. I didn't even know why, but I was hypervigilant. I reached out to touch Paul because I had to touch SOMEONE or SOMETHING to bring me back to reality. He was sleeping and never woke up. I didn't wake him up, either, because he's been incredibly tired lately, and it wouldn't have been fair to interrupt his sleep.

Thing is, Paul will tell you that, unlike most people, I don't run away from night terrors, I run TOWARD them. He's seen me do it countless times. I go on the attack toward whatever it is that scares me, I don't run away, and that's why he tells friends he's 'surprised he hasn't peed blood' because if he's in between me and IT (whatever IT is), I will try to go over or through him to keep HIM safe, too. Overactive imagination much? Yeah, you could say so.

During my first marriage, Gary was gone almost all the time and I was home alone with the kids, working and taking care of things. One night, I slept on the couch and I woke up and, in my mind, I thought I saw someone trying to crawl into the house through the windows in the dining room, which was in direct eyeshot of where I was sleeping.

Instead of running away, I rushed toward the window, grabbed whatever I could, and yelled, "Come on, motherf*cker, I'll KILL you!" In retrospect, VERY stupid. I mean...guns, right? What if that had happened and they had a weapon? But in my dreamy haze, I only knew there was a threat to me and my children, so I attacked.

When I was a little girl, my pediatrician told Mom not to let me watch scary shows -- not even Casper the Ghost! -- because my imagination was so active that it wouldn't take much to send me into a state of terror. But I love horror films and they rarely scare me. My dreams do, though.

My mind knows what scares me, and if I could pen all the stories it tells me when I dream, I'd never run out of material. How I feel about these dreams is typical for me: some days I dislike it, other days I embrace it. I can see the good and the bad in them. As with anything else in this world (or beyond), there are two sides to the same coin: dark/light, harsh/mellow, hot/cold, positive/negative. More often than not, I get most of my story ideas and characters from dreams.

If you think it's confusing being my friend and not knowing where I'm going to come from or go to next with my thoughts or posts, you can't imagine what it's like to be inside my mind. But because I'm a writer, I wouldn't have it any other way.