On Being Plagued by Recurring Nightmares

by Jennifer Weigel

Things I did and didn’t say or do still haunt me like candles flickering at the periphery of my psyche, bearing with them those things over which I never had control.

Image credit: Marten Newhall on Unsplash

Calculated, cold, and condescending, these thoughts that plague my slumber are only incorporeal in spirit; each word they carry cuts like a razor blade, jarring me from sleep.  My anxiety bleeds in shallow breaths spent lying awake and wondering if the outcomes could have been different, the dark recesses of my mind whispering of uncertainty, bearing heavy, leaden weights that the ghosts, these thoughts, cannot themselves carry.  Whatever path(s) I’ve chosen were and are the wrong one(s), and my musings are again lost to their quandary.  I never meant for things to end this way, but then again, perhaps I never meant for things to end.  Why wasn’t I more careful with myself, my actions, my circumstances…? Time and again, it seems that time does not always heal all wounds.

And yet, there are moments when I sit in perfect stillness and the pain subsides.  At first, only a little bit, as I become unsure of what I am feeling, or, moreover of what I can and cannot feel.  My heart still aches, my head still throbs, my anxiety still flutters in my chest, in my mind, in my being.  I still can’t help but let the doubt in, it is a comfortable bedfellow even though it treats me harshly, stealing away my voice and my future by whispering of my haunted past time and again.  At times, that uncertainty is all I have known, and I cannot relinquish myself of its familiarity.  Though these roots are not very well grounded, they have nonetheless helped to sustain me.  In this, I still cry myself to sleep too often, knowing I will succumb to the nightmares again and again.  It is never finished, for regret and shame are pervasive.

But every once in a while, the doubt quiets enough that I can feel every inhale and every exhale of my breath.  I can feel my toes wriggling, my fingers stretching, my body caught within itself in the moment.  The weight of the blanket on my arms and legs and back, the softness of the pillow as it embraces my face…these are the things that help bring stillness of true circumstance.  These are the things that offer an alternative focus, a path out of my musings.  These awarenesses allow me to come up for air, and in them, I can just be present.  Sometimes, that is enough, and I can get the rest and respite that I need.  I can start to heal, to rejuvenate bit by bit.

I have to remind myself that acceptance is a journey, not a destination.

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Jennifer Weigel

Multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist Jennifer Weigel lives in Kansas, USA, with her husband. Weigel has been a regular contributor to Haunted MTL and is involved with Nat1 Publishing. Author of Witch Hayzelle’s Recipes for Disaster novella/chapbook trilogy and Truly Tasteless Terrors compilation of art and writing, as well as a myriad of short stories, poems, art discourse, and more drifting around the Interwebs. https://jenniferweigelart.com/