Nightmare in Dreams

What an awful nightmare I had last night. It’s the first night I hadn’t taken any sleep supplements in over a week because I felt I didn’t need them. Had worked super hard yesterday and was exhausted. But PTSD doesn’t let you have a sound sleep even when you want to! Constantly dreaming. I woke up more than four times over the course of 8 hours. Everytime I fell back asleep the nightmare continued. J left for work at 4am and I felt I hadn’t slept at all, gave him a big cuddle then thought oh I can finally have a good sleep in. Nope. Dreamt for 4 hours then couldn’t do it anymore. What a crap night.

The dream starts off and I’m in a BIG house. Almost a mansion. I’m with J and I hear a commotion. There’s a bunch of rowdy kids outside making lots of noise. It’s the middle of the night and I get scared but J doesn’t pay any mind. I go out to check and find out one of my cousins is dead in a graveyard nearby. Killed or murdered. I’m absolutely mortified. (I think this is when I first woke up). Later I come back and the house is empty. All the doors are wide open and nothing is locked. J is nowhere to be found. I’m angry at him for leaving. His friends come round and start playing games downstairs whilst I try to sleep upstairs (sleeping in a dream… lol). They are calling out for me but I ignore them. I think I’m afraid of them. One of them comes into my room and makes advances at me. I fend him off and he tells me J is cheating on me with another woman. I automatically believe him and I’m absolutely distraught at this point (woke up after this too). Back in the dream I have run away. I’m in an unknown town I’ve never seen before with a friend I don’t recognise. We are trying to find out what happened to my cousin. A lot of this is blurry but it ends up with us in the killer’s house. There is food EVERYWHERE. Like just whole plates of meals lying everywhere. We are just like “fuck it” and start eating. Seconds later the cops show up and chase us for trespassing. How the fuck did the dream end up here? (Woke up again).
I’m back in the house and my family is there. My cousin is alive and they’re lecturing me for overreacting. I tell them I have to find J. I turn around and the house is empty again. Doors blown wide open. No one in sight. I’m all alone.

When J woke me up to say goodbye I was so upset. I genuinely believed he had just disappeared and cheated on me, it took several minutes for reality to settle back in. He was so confused, poor thing. He urged me to go back to bed and have a good nights sleep but it just kept replaying parts of the dream in my head over and over. It’s not often I dream for a full 8 hours but fuck it feels awful.

Woken up today and I feel like complete shit. I messaged J but he’s busy working and I just feel silly bothering him. Whenever people die in my dreams it feels so real as well. I wonder what this dream meant and why my cousin? Maybe I feel guilty I haven’t made the effort to see my extended family for a long time.

Writing it out like this it just seems so silly and all over the place but it felt so real for me lol. Definitely not skipping my sleeping pills next time.