invasion in Dreams

last night i had TWO dreams of home invasion. it is hard enough to have one but having two entirely separate dreams of the topic was enough to cast an intense feeling of dread over my morning. it is very hard for me to separate the emotions i feel in intense nightmares with reality. i remember when i was a teenager, i had an awful nightmare about a ghost hunting me no matter where i went, and she eventually found me and stood over me. i’ll never forget the look in her face. i don’t consider myself a spiritual person nor do i truly believe in ghosts, but this dream shook me to my core. i spent the whole day upon waking up afraid and shaking, jumping at every noise. it was terrifying.

alas, i don’t dream much about ghosts or monster anymore. perhaps because the fears of my psyche have changed. fictional ju-on characters no longer haunt my dreams, now my nightmares revolve around home invasions. and boy do i have a lot of these.

the first one i was struggling to stay awake in the dream (meta as!) as i was lying in bed, talking to a friend on the phone. i could hear movement in the apartment and footsteps approaching, but my eyes wouldn’t stay open. everything was spinning and i felt that i might have been drugged. as the dream was ending i felt a presence next to my body, a long shadow. upon waking up my head was spinning rapidly and i thought it might have been a bout of vertigo. i mistook the curtain for a human and had an intense 3-second long panic before realising i was in bed and it was a dream.

i fell back asleep and almost immediately had a different but similar dream. i was walking around the apartment, checking locks and doors to ensure everything is shut tightly (i do this often now IRL). upon walking past the front door i start to hear scratches. i look through the peephole and it is complete darkness, nothing visible. the scratches change to lockpicking noises, the door handle jiggling. struck by fear, i can do nothing but stand there helplessly, ear pressed to the door. it suddenly stops and there is just silence. i wake up.

as far as home invasion dreams go, this one was fairly mild. They usually involve me running through the house, discovering doors and windows wide open, knowing the invader has already breached the walls and is somewhere inside. i have A LOT of these dreams. i don’t know where they come from and if the fear is literal or metaphorical.

we did have a home invasion at my parents house once. they did not wake or harm us but disturbed our things and stole a bunch of valuable items. i had woken up whilst they were in the house, but was half-asleep and not able to piece together what was happening. i heard the noises and even briefly saw a man walking past downstairs, but i had assumed in my state that it was my brother and went back to sleep. ofc i had forgotten that at this point, my brother was away at uni and not living at home.
when our family woke up the next morning and discovered the aftermath, i was extremely upset. it was always a deep deep fear of mine that whilst i slept, someone was standing over me, watching me. this fear arose in me after watching paranormal activity as a teenager (!) and i never forgot this deep feeling of dread of being silently judged, whilst i am in a complete unconscious and unknowing state. i couldn’t stop thinking, what if the thief had entered my room and watched me? had he done anything? touched anything? the thought of it alone was hard for me to stomach. this was made worse by my mother’s accusations that it was MY fault that the robbers had done what they did, as i had not acted when i woke up in the middle of the night (like what was i meant to do? fight them in hand-to-hand combat in the dark? i was 16 years old lol)

i don’t actively, consciously think of this event that much anymore. i definitely now double-check and triple-check locks though, as a consequence. it is possible that this deep fear is still buried in my subconscious, jumping back up whenever i sleep to possess my amygdala and ruin my night’s rest. it’s possible it’s also metaphorical too. who is the invader? i never see them in my dreams, just hear them, or catch dark glimpses. perhaps it is trauma, anxiety, depression, phobias. perhaps all the people that have wronged me. fear is something i still struggle immensely with, and most, if not all, of my currents fears are irrational. sometimes i think the ‘invader’ is just someone, or something, a repressed memory perhaps.

maybe one dream i’ll get to find out who they are. let’s hope i get a good sleep tonight.