Trigger Warning: Nightmares

Webster's Dictionary defines a nightmare as...

Definition of NIGHTMARE

1

: an evil spirit formerly thought to oppress people during sleep

2

: a frightening dream that usually awakens the sleeper

3

: something (as an experience, situation, or object) having the monstrous character of a nightmare or producing a feeling of anxiety or terror

What Webster's dictionary doesn't mention is that nightmares suck and can really leave a person traumatized.

I had a nightmare last night that has totally messed me up. (I think I had a migraine in my sleep to top it all off because I woke up with shoulder pain, stiffness, and weakness in my right arm/side of my body), and I dreamed that I was in jail. I was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, but instead of a cell, I had to crawl in a cave where I couldn't do anything but lay down. It was a very narrow space. If I sat up, I would have hit my head. There was no loo in the cave, and the officers laughed when I asked where the loo was. (They weren't called "officers" they were called "Amministratores" which I found odd. I looked did a search on that word, it's Italian for officer.) So I would lay there, close to tears. My husband and other family members would come to visit me, and officers would come and get me out of this cave so I could visit. I kept asking the warden what I did. He eluded to me being a bad person, even eluded to the fact that I told someone off and punched them dead in the face, but he wouldn't tell me why I was in jail. I met my cellmate, a man who was literally insane. He thought he was a woman. He brought in for rape. I was scared. I didn't want that man in the cave with me. He talked like he was mentally challenged and was telling me that we were going to have so much fun together. I cringed. I was sent back to the cave. The man was being processed, then he would come down there with me.

I decided to ask for a reduced sentence. The cave was scary. It would fill up with water when he rained. I didn't have a loo to use. The Amministratore decided to reduce my sentence, but still refused to tell me what I did to get arrested in the first place. (They also played "Good Cop/Bad Cop" with me.) They reduced my sentence, but they didn't let me go. They just put me in a regular cell.

The whole dream was really freaky, and I woke up, wondering how I got out of jail. Did I break out? Did my husband sneak me out? Did I serve my time? I had to spend twenty minutes telling myself that none of it ever happened, because I realized why I was thrown in jail, in the cave...

I had escaped from a concentration camp...