Notes from the Black Diary:
On nightmares and the unreal
PTSD Dreams 1: weeks of dreams of work problems circulating unsolvably in my head. I never used to dream about my previous work, where the PTSD arose. Why am I dreaming of this one?
PTSD Dreams 2: after reading Freud on a woman's throat, quite clearly a sexual metaphor, a horrific dream of cutting a woman's head off.
PTSD Dreams 3: the nightmares are getting worse. I dreamt of a large spider uncurling from a piece of wood and attacking my youngest child as we tried to stab it. I woke, and then slept again, only to dream I had to kill 19 ducklings; I tried and failed to break the first one's neck, so had to decapitate them with a penknife, bending their necks across the knife and pulling it through with a ghastly rip.
PTSD Dreams 4: I dreamt I was walking with a university friend across my old school playground, when we spotted a body, but it wasn't a body, it was just the skin, which leapt to its knees, fluttering violently and screaming "Fire! Fireeeee!". I woke in a sweat and slept again, only to dream I was a lecturer again, but lecturing in a swimming pool filled with air. I was forced to lecture in underwater sounds. Above me the way to the surface was blocked by women in black dresses, who heedlessly stamped in my mouth while slowly treading water in mid air.
3 Jan 2023
Spring 2023
9 April 2023
2 May 2023