And still the nightmares come...

Okay, I just poured myself a second cup of tea. An extra infusion of caffeine that I need because I spent most of last night falling in and out of the same nightmare. I woke up gasping trying to claw my way out at least twice. Once I woke up enough (I think) to try and move the cat off my feet but I still fell right back in when I fell back asleep.

This week has been a vivid dream week. I've had strange dreams all week (they tend to come in clusters) and Sunday I had several different nightmares. But last night was by far the worst.
Because last night the nightmare was about my mother. Again.

Now that I'm truly awake and have had tea and some time has passed the details are fuzzy but I remember the gist, and it was that I had done something to upset my mother and she had lost her mind to the point of being scary and I was trying to get out of the house, with my cat (not John's cat, but my dead cat Putters making a rather sweet cameo in what was otherwise straight up misery) and enough clothes, shoes etc to live. There was lots of running, hiding, being shrieked at and pure terror that I wasn't going to be able to get away and save my cat too.

In one of the dreams I had help and this person was trying to get me out of the house and I was hysterical that we had to get the cat now or she might hurt the cat, I might not be able to get her back, I had to go back for the cat.

In another one I was hiding in a teeny trailer (it was maybe ten by 20 feet) that I had tried to make homey with the few things I had grabbed and a friend had come over and I was feeling safe, and petting Putters and saying I didn't think she could find me. The trailer was parked in the middle of a huge trailer park and I was huddled inside hoping that from the outside it was just one more trailer.

All horror aside, it was really nice to see my cat again, I really miss her.

In a few months it will have been 3 years since my mother died and it makes me sad that in every single appearance she has made in my sleep has been as the root of a nightmare. Twice before I've had mom nightmare clusters where over a few weeks I've had several nightmares about her. In them she is always crazy and scary and I am always terrified of her.

I wonder what she would think of that? That her legacy for me is one of fear. That even dead some part of me is scared of her. That sometimes she scares me so much I wake up with a scream in my throat?