In the last few years, I’ve been having more nightmares. Times in my deep sleep where I dream that I know I’m sleeping but need to get myself out of danger but no sound comes out of my mouth.

In dreams, there are only silent screams.

Last night, it happened again and Andrew had to calm me down as I had found my voice and woke him up with my screams.

I had been dreaming that I was in a room quietly sleeping and was roused awake by a movement in the room. I woke up to see an ominous silent flying baby in the distance. It hovered as a black shadow in the distance and I had to draw attention to myself.

In my dream, I dreamt that in order to get attention I had to break free of my silent screams so I dreamt I took my hand out of the bed covers and was banging a can on a nearby table just to get attention. At the same time, I’m screaming but no sound coming out of my mouth.

I remember dreaming that if I continued to scream that somehow my voice will come back to me, so I dreamed I was forcing myself to wake to get myself to a new sleep state where my voice will find me.

Next thing I remember is Andrew’s hand on my shoulder holding me down.

I’ve had sleep paralysis and nightmares happen more so in the last few years than ever before. There are times when I arise from bed and sit there asleep (but don’t walk anywhere thankfully). There’s a logical reason for not having a voice in our dreams. Simply because in our sleep state, some of our motor functions are resting. Eg talking, screaming, yelling so even though it seems we are doing it but no voice comes out, we start to panic. Or we dream we are panicking.

So it seems bizarre that I dreamt that I knew this fact and hence had to figure out a way to get myself out of that deep state into a lighter sleep state for those motor functions to kick in. Hence why I just kept screaming over and over until I thought I did that.

Of course, I didn’t do all that deliberately. Meaning, in my dream state im simply dreaming that I am getting my body to this state. In my dream state, I don’t have the control – I’m merely dreaming that I have this agency.

It took a while to calm down after that.

My heart rate was racing, my breathing was deep and rapid. I couldn’t get back to sleep for a long while after that. I wished I was wearing my heart rate monitor to see what was going on.

I’ve had some doozy nights these last few years and I put it to the state of the world, the fears I have of life in near and distant future, of ageing parents, of my own state of my health and mortality. I guess it’s part and parcel of getting used to the idea that you’re not in control. It’s just an illusion. Even though you accept it in your waking life, maybe there’s a part of my subconscious that’s still fighting it.

Or maybe I just ate cheese just before bed. (We have this funny saying that if you have nightmares it’s because you ate too much cheese before bed!?). However, no – no cheese. No alcohol either.

However luckily, the next day it’s as if nothing has happened. Everything seems ominous and dark at the early hours of the morning but when the new day starts, it’s all good again as if nothing happened.

Weird.