Some Dreams Aren't Nightmares Until You Wake Up

TW: abusive relationships, r*pe, PTSD

I recently finished a new book by my favorite author, VE Schwab. The book was Gallant. There's a quote that plays in my head constantly since I read it. "There is no rest in sleep. These dreams will be the death of me." I won't spoil the meaning of the quote. I think everyone should read the book and others by her if they have time, and that's not the point of this story. The quote has stuck with me because I immediately felt it connected to what it's like to have nightmares when you have PTSD. For almost a decade now, I've been living with the aftermath of leaving an abusive relationship that started in my late teens and lasted until my very early twenties. It feels both so long ago and like it just happened.

This relationship started as most do. We were friends and developed feelings for each other. Over the course of several years, my ex went from emotionally abusive to sexually abusive, and the last day I saw him, he raped me. I won't give too many details about this. I froze and don't remember much, and at the end of it, he rushed me to get out of his house and told me to "just say no next time." All that revealed to me is that he knew exactly what he just did, and was trying to blame me for it. He cheated on me and ended our relationship, but kept me hanging by a thread for months whenever he and his new girlfriend got into a fight, letting me believe there was still hope to get back together. This was my first love and first relationship. I did not know better was out there and took the bait for months even after it ended.

Today, I still have nightmares about that relationship. My body remembers more than my mind does and my PTSD lets me know that. I was not lucid for most of it, and that was a survival mechanism. Usually the dreams will be about traumatic events from the relationship, or scripts my brain wrote itself of things that could have happened if this person was still in my life. In these dreams I am often screaming at the top of my lungs for help, but no one hears me. The dreams have changed recently. They are deceivingly pleasant.

In the dreams, we usually meet up and reconnect, talk about the past and he is most of the time apologetic. Time progresses and we are together for a while. This has come in the form of hanging out with friends from my past and present, going to concerts (which makes no sense as he always put down my music taste, but who am I to question my brain's neurotransmitter soup), to even getting married and having children, something that couldn't be further from what I want out of life. These dreams are hyper-realistic. Those that you still feel very much attached to when you wake up. First there is a feeling of comfort and happiness when I wake from these dreams, then panic at the memory of what this person has actually done to me, followed by relief that it is just a dream. This is definitely one of the strangest forms my PTSD has taken. I want nothing to do with this person or our past relationship. I've blocked them on all social media and their phone number. I've done everything I can to remove this relationship from my life, yet the dreams I had of him changing and treating me the way I deserved still live in the depths of my unconscious.

I have a couple guesses as to why this happens to me. The first is probably the most likely. Dreams, scientifically, as I said before, are essentially neurotransmitter soup. When we are asleep there will be an increase of neurotransmitters like serotonin and they have nothing to do, so we get these movie-like experiences when we enter REM sleep. I'm a person who has incredibly vivid dreams, and can lucid dream from time to time as well as a history of sleep paralysis, so my experience in dreaming is quite mixed. Your brain pulls from memories, desires, fears, and anything else lying in the unconscious to create your dreams. Scientifically there is no rhyme or reason other than reflecting our desires, fears or lived experiences. It makes sense to want to attach further meaning to dreams, especially if you're someone like me who experiences them so vividly. However there is not evidence to back up the idea that there is any deeper meaning to dreams. I hate to burst anyone's bubble on that. It gives me some comfort when these dreams pop up. There's relief in the thought that this doesn't actually mean anything. I've been told this means I'm not over this ex and want them back, or even that he is apologetic and dreaming or thinking about me. I shouldn't have to say it, but please don't tell an abuse survivor that their abuser is "coming back" and wants to do better for them. Don't tell them that they're "not over it" even if they are having deceptively pleasant dreams about them like I am. Seriously.

My other thought is that the idea that he would someday change helped me survive for years. I clung to that and would daydream about him treating me with basic respect and love that I had been deprived of in this relationship. I truly believed no one but him would ever love me, and that I did not deserve the love I dreamed about, but I still allowed myself to indulge in this fantasy. That's all it was. A fantasy. It got me through the fights, screaming, and crossing of my boundaries and consent. In these dreams I defend him and say that he's changed. It terrifies me in the moments when I wake up that I would fall for that. I know once reality sets in that would not happen, but this experience is a roller coaster. These dreams come to me most often when I am stressed. These fantasies about a man who hurt me so deeply got me through stressful times as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if these dreams happen as a defense mechanism of my brain trying to comfort me in times of stress, but it has the opposite effect.

I'm curious whether others have similar experiences. Has your brain ever tried to spin an earth shattering event to have a happy ending? Am I alone here? I haven't talked to many others about this other than my partner, so I have no idea how often this might occur. I feel so much shame when I wake up from these dreams, even after I try to comfort myself by saying they mean nothing. If this does happen to you, please know that this doesn't mean you still have feelings for the person who hurt you. There is nothing to be ashamed of, and you are not alone.