The dreams have always been vivid. Sometimes, they’re more vivid than reality.

The first night terror came when I was eighteen. There had been nightmares before that, but this one, this was full-blown terror. I sat on the back steps at my job and watched the sun go out. There were no details, like there are in dreams. Only the terror of knowing everyone, everyone, would die very, very soon.

I don’t get to pick what will live in my head when I’m asleep. But I think about it like I can, anyway. I think about what kind of dreams I prefer to have. I think about which kinds are the best (the lucid ones where I have the illusion that I’m controlling what happens in the dream) and the worst, and think, I’d rather have the simplicity of the night terror than the complexity of a mere nightmare. There’s less to think about.

But it doesn’t matter what I’d rather have. It only matters what I do have. I have dreams. Every night. And they tangle with memory so that at times I don’t know what’s real and what’s only been played out on the screen of my lurking subconscious. I dream conversations with people that I reference when I speak to them in my waking hours, forgetting it never happened. I travel to states and countries I’ve never been to in real life, and it’s as if I’ve actually visited them.

Sometimes, I wake refreshed. But sometimes, being asleep is so tiring.