The overwhelming taste of grief and sadness nauseates me so endlessly until all I can palate is a sleepless rest as the world turns onward.

Hallucinations often haunt me in the 3 o’clock hour.

I thought I had made my way beyond these strange stages of CPTSD, but… it’s not that simple.

I wake up abruptly, drenched in an overwhelming sense of fear.

For the briefest of moments, the world is a purgatory.

Nothing makes sense.

I am inebriated by irrational thought and exhausted vision.

Anything awful my mind can imagine is happening, has happened, or will happen. The sensations of wickedness become my reality the moment my senses recognize the emptiness beyond my comatose body.

Convinced of green spiders burrowing into my pillows, I shriek at them as they vanish into the cotton threading, swatting and throwing them across the room. Whenever I managed to fall asleep, it was without any pillows.

Watching as death lingers in the shadows beyond the reaches of my bed, certain he has stolen the very breath of every living creature around me as a means to torment me further. I shake the shoulder and shout the names of my dogs or husband as he lays beside me, convinced of my delusion.

Witnessing the walls of artwork and photos shift and change in maniacal ways, distorting smiling faces and stripping color from lush landscapes into ash-laden desolation akin to Silent Hill.

For a few seconds or longer, my delusions are real.

I am in danger. The world has ended. Strange creatures are creeping all around me and my family. I am not alive.

And then, just as swiftly as it started, the delusion dissipates.

The colors return to faded photographs. Faces return to smiles of happiness. My dog’s chest moves upward as she inhales a deep breath in her slumber. The dark shadows recede to the edges of the room.

I’m myself again, once more.

At times, my dreams are so vivid and lengthy… it’s hard to believe they may only last 30–120 minutes or so. Sometimes, even if I fall asleep for only an hour, it feels like I’ve dreamed for days, enduring different lifetimes.

I have dreamed of being born, growing up, going to school, falling in love, getting married, building a career, and having a family — only to wake up to realize none of those things happened. Over the length of a single night, that dream went on for years… decades, even.

I have dreamed of things that have come to pass, things that have never happened, relived experiences from my youth, or played out unrealistic scenarios with friends, family, and coworkers.

I’ve had dreams about working long hours cataloging illegible files and folders, or building hand-carved palaces of wood in distant lands, or fishing with a classmate from grade school in the middle of a still lake on a summer day. Most of my dreams don’t mean anything… but sometimes, they can mean everything to me, and I won’t know it until years later.

Around 2017, I dreamed of a world where I had two red dogs: one big, one small. I was sitting on the back porch of my home, taking in the changing breeze as the spring turned to summer. I looked down to my left, expecting to see Allie and Lily, my dogs in real life, but only saw two red dogs.

In my panic, I realized that Allie and Lily were deceased, and their replacements lay on the cotton bed to the left of my feet.

I woke up abruptly, crying and shouting for Allie and Lily… only to realize they had been asleep on the bed — awoken by my shrieking voice penetrating the silence of the night.

It took some time for my sleepy-eyed husband to convince me that they were okay. I hugged them so tightly that night, repeating how much I loved them until we all fell asleep again.

I wrote about my experience in my dream diary later that day, and moved on from it as best as I could throughout the rest of the week.

Years later, in May of 2022, I was sitting on the back porch of my house, enjoying the beauty of the spring weather and the sound of the wind as it brushed through the branches of the trees.

In a moment of calmness, I looked down to my left side to see Penny and Bailey, cuddling on the cotton bed Allie and Lily once occupied.

In that moment, my dream came to pass.

There, beside me at my feet, were two red dogs. Allie and Lily had passed away just barely 5 months beforehand, and only 3 weeks apart.

I was struck with such a strong sensation of déjà vu, I lost my breath.

Nearly everything was the same.

What I was wearing… the layout of the back porch… the way the sun cascaded across the trees surrounding the house…

Somehow, I had been in that moment before. I couldn’t quite remember when or how — but I was certain of it.

And then, I remembered.

The dream of two red dogs.

The night I woke up from a horrible nightmare, determined to hold Allie and Lily so close. The night I felt what it would feel like to someday live in a world without them… these beautiful dogs who I had raised since they were puppies. I’d poured every ounce of love from heart into them.

And now, they were gone.

Their ashes sitting in the hallway behind closed glass doors.

I cried for several days after that.

The brute realization of the true nature to the reality of what had transpired was so overwhelming. I struggled with it for a long while that year, going through the many stages of infinite grief.

Dreams, I can handle.

Dreams, I prefer… but the hallucinations are horrible.

It took me a long while to understand or realize I was having hallucinations. I think it’s something I’ve experienced throughout my life, but had long periods where I didn’t. I think they can vary based on traumatic experiences or feelings of safety.

I’ve somewhat recently WebMD’d myself and I think I may be experiencing something called hypnopompic hallucinations, but I don’t know for sure as I’ve never been diagnosed by something that isn’t a computer screen.

Reportedly, during hypnopompic hallucinations, people tend to sense things that are not actually happening while in a state between dreaming and waking. For most people, hypnopompic hallucinations are primarily visual, although some can involve sound and tactile sensations.

My grandmother has periodically reminded me of a time when I was about 9 years old and woke her up abruptly, screaming about bugs crawling all over me. Just weeks before that incident, I had watched The Mummy, and that plagued my nightmares for a longtime — even though I loved the movie so much. I was terrified I’d be consumed by those scarabs someday.

Unfortunately, during that same year, I was experiencing the worst of the sexual abuse I endured as a child… and in my own home. Between the sexual abuse from the caregiver and physical/emotional abuse from my mother, there were very few moments of safety in my childhood.

Seemingly, I only experience hallucinations upon waking up. Sometimes, I experience hallucinations multiple times during a single evening if I wake up throughout the night.

So, I think they may be hypnopompic hallucinations… but who knows. I don’t know if I’ll ever be diagnosed. It’s so hard to find a psychologist that specializes in the varying layers of traumatic experiences I’ve had in my life. It feels like it’s up to me to fix myself… and I’m doing an awful job of it.

Another term to add to the list that defines my brand of crazy, I guess.

Another secret I keep to myself that no one knows.

Well, except you, dear reader… if ever there is.