The dark side. The flipside. A nightmare I’ve had many times that still terrorises me.

Sitting up in bed, crying silently so as not to disturb my partner more than I already had. Turning the light on briefly to make sure it was J lying there, not the person in my dream. Watching the light play dimly on the wall, willing myself not to go to sleep again. Taking deep breaths to calm down and try to believe the shadows stalking me had stopped when the nightmare did.

It’s hard to describe the fear I felt last night. Actually I don’t want to describe it. It’s a case of if you know you know, and if you don’t know how it is to feel that kind of terror then I don’t ever want you to.

I eventually slept. Woke feeling hopeless and humiliated. It seems that no matter how fcking positive and together and solid I become, I’ll still keep getting dragged back into the trauma of my past.

I’ve felt heavy all day today. Slightly fearful, quite tearful. Decidedly un-together. That’s just how it is. It always takes me a day and a good night’s sleep to recover.

I’d like not to have these nightmares but I do. It’s how life is for me. It may change in the future. Hell, I might not ever have one again. Who knows. But in the meantime, I just gotta accept these nights and shadowed days as part of who I am.

Like I said yesterday, there’s grace to be found in every bit of fear, if you have the strength to look for it. The grace in these heavy hours is that it makes me completely determined to work. I turn to working almost desperately, as a release valve for nearly overwhelming feeling, and/or to make something beautiful in counterpoint to the darkness. I thank god for my ability to express how it is that I feel.

{Nightmare, 2020 is available as a limited edition studioprint]