Bad dreams

Woke up tired and grumpy this morning. I discovered that it was already too hot to have the windows open for a while (at 8 AM, no less!) to cool the house down. But it’s only 72 inside now, and 75 and climbing outside.

I had been in the middle of a bad dream, in which someone was in my house. I have a recurring series of dreams in which someone—always a man—breaks or sneaks into my home. Sometimes the man forces his way in, sometimes he’s hiding somewhere in the house. In last night’s dream, I realized that I had forgotten to lock the door at all, and he was behind the shower curtain. I saw him hiding there and ran to the neighbor’s house, but no one answered the doorbell. I kept trying to dial 9-1-1 on my phone but couldn’t seem to push the right numbers.

It doesn’t take a professional therapist (that reminds me, I’ve got an appointment today…) to figure out the cause of these dreams: sometimes I’m afraid of living alone. Especially at night.

In the daytime and the evening, I love being alone in my house. I love to look around and smile at this place that belongs only to me. I enjoy the peace and quiet, the solitude, the freedom to wander the halls in whatever I happen to be wearing (or not), and to eat right out of the refrigerator with my fingers. I like having control of the remote, and I like being able to stop a movie in the middle if I want to do something else for a while. I like to read in the living room without someone else’s stereo or TV show blasting me out. I like having 100% approval over all decorating and furniture decisions. I love that if there are dishes in the sink, there’s no one to blame but myself—and I don’t have to wash them until I get tired of seeing them there. I love vacuuming only when I feel like it. I love that there’s only one lap for the cat to choose from, so I don’t have to watch him cozying up to someone else when I’m cold. Most of the time, I really love living alone.

But at night I get nervous. I’ve been living here by myself for more than two years now, but the creaks and settling sounds of the dark house still worry me. Anything that sounds like a window opening, or a footstep in the hall, still freaks me out. I glance around at the slightest scrape or shadow, and I hate it when the cats stare at something behind me that isn’t there. In my bedroom, I turn the TV on with a half-hour timer and fall asleep that way, because otherwise I hear everything with that superhuman, extra-alert hearing that magnifies every tiny squeak into dangerous intrusions. (I know it’s not good to sleep with the TV on, but it’s only on just long enough for me to get to sleep, and then I can usually stay asleep just fine.)

Consequently, I dream from time to time about someone breaking in. I’m very careful not to watch movies or TV shows where women are attacked in their homes, because while my memory has conveniently erased all the geometry and state capitals I ever knew, it can play whole remembered film scenes of women being threatened/attacked— in glorious Technicolor, no less.

I know, I know that it’s so unlikely that anything will ever happen to me, but it’s hard to convince myself of this while lying helpless in the dark. While the rational part of me knows that my statistical odds of a break-in or attack of any kind are very low, my racing pulse tells me otherwise. It makes me want to get a big dog, but then of course I remember the urban legend about the single woman who did just that, and then the psycho who broke in simply killed her dog first. You see what I mean? Why would my brain possibly retain that ridiculous story, except to torture me?

When my building was being fitted with new siding and windows last winter, the workmen went off and left a window open one evening. I got home from dinner at my parents’ house to discover it wide open in my living room, no screen, plastic sheeting flapping ominously. I knew that I had to search the house to make sure everything was okay, but my knees were shaking so badly that I couldn’t do it. That’s always the scene in the movie where the crazy man is hiding in the closet with the hatchet, and you’re yelling at the hero/ine, “Get OUT of the HOUSE!”, but they never do. So I called my dad, who (fairly) graciously came over and did a sweep for me, and then suggested I get to know my neighbors better so they could do it next time.

The construction went on for several weeks, during which time they had a lockbox on my door so that they could come and go as needed. Every night I would come home and make sure all the windows were locked, and then look in all the closets and under the bed with my breath held. I was very relieved when they finished up. (So were the cats, who would greet me at the door after work as if they were trying to tell me, Someone was IN the HOUSE while you were GONE, and I would reassure them that it was just the men installing the new windows, but their nervousness made me edgy too.)

Okay, I’m freaking myself out here, and it’s the middle of a beautiful sunny morning. Like I said, most of the time I love living alone. It’s just once in a while that my imagination is too much for me. But I never forget to lock the doors or windows.


(In other news, I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of my GRE study materials. No, really, I am. I opted for the Super Saver free shipping from Amazon, but now I kind of wish I had paid the $6.99 to get my books sooner so I could get started on relearning all the math I’ve forgotten. I’m even looking forward to studying, if my brain hasn’t completely atrophied from lack of use in the last few years.)