*cough, cough*

I coughed myself awake at 3am this morning, stayed awake coughing until my right before husband got up for work at 4:30am, and later, I had such a terrible nightmare that I wish I would've just gotten up at 3am in the first place.

I dreamed first about being at a truck stop. This part isn't very nightmarish, but not my most favorite dream ever...
Evan and I were dancing inside a truck stop restaurant (I have only been to one in my life and it was like 7 years ago!), holding each other close and slowly moving our feet to the music round other people who were eating. He pointed out to me that in between all of the tables, there were shower heads coming out of the ceiling and he thought that it was a great idea to take a shower. I went with it without much protest, and we were suddenly naked, in front of everyone, showering AND dancing. Oddly enough, I felt safe and secure in his arms and he was hiding me from the many eyes that were on us as best as he could.

Then, across the way, I see that a man staring at Evan with the biggest, ugliest googly eyes I have ever seen. He looked as though he were literally raping him visually. I pointed it out to Evan and he looked over at the guy and said something about it and the guy asked something like "What's wrong with being attracted to a big, beautiful woman?" At this point, I had not yet taken my eyes off the nasty old man and I looked back in Evan with shock on my face to see what his reaction to that comment was, and Evan was now a larger framed blonde woman in her 40's. This took me by surprise, but I went with it. We pretty much immediately quit showering and started to get dressed when I was awakened by Evan's Alarm Clock. At least that dream didn't get sexual. Thankful for that.

When I fell asleep the next time, I dreamed about my neighbors. My neighbors have been in my dreams more than once and it's never good. Someday, I will have to go into detail about why (there are so many reasons...), but in the mean time I am working on having patience with them. Anyhow, In my dreams, our backyards were not connected by a fence (if that was true, I would build one by hand by myself if I had to!) and I walked from my backyard to their backyard. At least 30 cats and a few dogs (this has some truth to it) came running up to me and also to an unknown (at the time) male who was by my side. Even if I don't see Evan in my dream, I usually know it's him but this man was not Evan, although I seemed to know this man well.

Hailey came running up out of nowhere and scattered all of the cats like you would see a child run into a flock of birds to scatter them away. I tell her to stop but she had already given me a crazed look and was gone before I knew what happened. I made a comment to the man at my side that I wasn't sure what was going through that child's head sometimes, when I realized it Was Danny. Danny is Hailey's bio-dad. The only source of real stress in my life lately.

I was suddenly a little bit uncomfortable and had my guard on, but I continued standing with him when my neighbor came up to me. She was drinking and smoking a cigarette, slightly buzzed, when I decided that I had completely had enough and said "You know, you have way too many animals. It's not healthy. I shouldn't have to worry about your animals meowing and barking me awake in the middle of the night, coming into my house every time I open my door, and shitting all over the place." At this point, she laughs and tells me she doesn't care what I think so I tell her "That's great, it doesn't matter too much if you care what I think but I just called animal control and in a few moments, you might care what they think." Those were my actual words.

She looks a little worried, but continues to sip on her beer. I walked away by myslef, leaving Danny standing there with my neighbor. Instead of calling animal control, I went over there because well, they were only a few houses down! If only life were so convenient. I marched right in and told them about all of the animals and as I was talking to the lady, I realized i wasn't wearing any pants. Great. Well, at least I had a long shirt on :) I kept pulling my shirt down while I was talking and intermittently apologizing for my lack of pants but never offering an explaination. I suppose there wouldn't be many explainations out there, huh?

She, in a nut shell, tells me there is nothing that they can do. Great. So I was talking to them in my undies for no reason. I start back toward home and pass my neighbor and somewhere around 10 other people out back drinking and smoking, just hanging out. I walked right through the crowd and past my neighbor who was not mad or confrontational (yeah right) and I thought to myself "I love that drunk people will just forget and forgive... while they're drunk anyway... maybe she won't remember..." And it was then that I spotted Danny again.

He came up to me like he belonged at my side and we walked. We went to sit on a porch deck and as soon as we get onto the porch, it is suddenly barred and contained to the point in which I could not escape. I realize that Danny is completely drunk and he tells me what types of liquor he's been drinking. In real life, Danny was the absolute meanest drunk that I have ever seen when he drank hard alcohol. Drunk from beer and he was an asshole, but drunk from liquor and he was unthinkably angry and almost evil. He then, in the dream, pins me down and begins torturing me. He's pulling my hair, calling me names, telling me how worthless I am. This is all bring back such a sense of de ja vu. I feel that this is real because it happened so many times when we were together. The look in his eyes was exactly the same as it always had been; like he wasn't even posessing his own body. Like he couldn't stop if he wanted to.

I begin screaming and begging him to stop. Telling him everything that he wants to hear. "I'll be with you again!" "I'll do anything you want!" He rips off my shirt and then starts ripping and tearing my pants into shreds tries to slide something over my foot and onto my ankle, some type of device to chain me down. I fight with all of my might so he cannot get it over my foot to trap me there. This goes on for what seems to be an eternity. He suddenly lets go and says "You're right, I am an asshole when I'm drunk" and laughs hysterically. At this point, I break from his grip and wiggle free and the deck was no longer contained so I run. I run for a long time until I know I am safe. And I wake up.