a dreamless sleep

my least favorite place to go are my dreams.

Jul 15, 2026

a journal entry from January 17th, 2026. about my aversion toward dreaming (as a self-proclaimed dreamr grl).

my least favorite place to go are my dreams.

for over a decade now i’ve spent most nights pleading for sleep’s jaws to shove me under a tongue, quick so no teeth catch.

in other words, i beg for a dreamless sleep.

all dreams are nightmares for me. even the ones that aren’t technically nightmarish. the ones that are just plain weird, nonsensical. the ones that play out your hopes, passions, the perfect scenarios for that thing you’re really stressed out about. nightmares, all of em.

i wake from these dreams frightened, uncomfortable, wary. i could not understand why. when i tell people i’ve never had a pleasant dream in my life i get bemused, disbelieving looks. i’ve now come to understand my dreaming apprehension as tied to control (as much of my neuroticism is rooted in!).

unconscious is the only state where i am forced to experience whatever pseudo reality i’ve conjured that night. i have no say, no ability to even move my limbs, much less change the landscape and exposition. it is an experience so dreadful that i am, many nights, unable to sleep unless extreme exhaustion has put a bag over me. i get overcome with nerves otherwise, anticipating getting swept up and portaled to another land of which i have no knowledge of rules, of context, of myself, either.

it never feels right, dreaming. i could be living out my greatest fantasy and still the eeriness of having no bodily autonomy and no control over what comes next will persist and overwhelm. it feels off, like every object is slightly tilted at an angle. except everything is tilted so it all appears cohesive, just subliminally unnerving.

my dreams are my least favorite place to visit. i rather live a nightmare out here where i can push against my pulse and be certain this is real. this is a living nightmare, but this is flesh that can draw blood and patch wounds.

i suppose real life is not so different though. anything can happen and it would be out of my control, without my say-so. i guess it’s an illusion of control, then, that makes this world a little less formidable than dreamworld. the fact that i can jump and cause a ruckus if i wanted to, even if it doesn’t do anything. i can move my mouth and organize my words the way i want even if that doesn’t change anything. it doesn’t work like that in dreams. in dreams i’m pushed into the middle of a movie scene with a script and a body that i can’t own but still have to be trapped in.

i’m writing this past midnight, as to avoid sleep again. my eyelids are gaining weight and my temples have begun to thud a little. it’s more effortless to step into unsettling things when your body starts to function without your permission. how ironic is that?

i stopped hoping for sweet dreams a long time ago. i now hope to sway into a darkness that can wrap around me for some hours before letting me go back into the only world i feel is suited for misery and jubilation, uncertainty and premonition. i want my dreams to manifest out here, the strange ones, the fickle ones, the torturous ones, the kind ones. i’d never worry about waking up again.

when i lost several years of my memory in 2024 it was not so dissimilar to being in a dream. i was not asleep—i knew this—but it did not quite feel like i was awake either.

it’s akin to the way dreams deposit you in domains that are familiar, but not. a dream where you’re sat at your grandmother’s home that’s somehow got the furniture of your college apartment and a door to your 10th grade english teacher’s classroom. pieces make sense, but the whole does not. with memory loss i could remember my parents’ house i grew up in but could not recognize the neighborhood it was surrounded by. i knew things i didn’t know how i knew (ok tongue twister) such as a plot twist to a film i couldn’t recall ever watching or the names of old coworkers i had no memory of working with.

the year and a half following the onset of amnesia was uniquely tumultuous. i had trouble distinguishing reality from what was my honest memory. according to the way i had learned to understand dreams, i was in one, whether awake or asleep.

thank god it’s not like this anymore. though most of my memory has not returned, enough time has passed for me to reestablish a sense of self as well as sufficient methods to separate true memory from the fabrications my brain supplied in an effort to fill in the gaps. that said, dreams, the unconscious ones, still often nestle in my head like a nuclear threat. they are hard to rid and harder to control.

i suppose if there’s any silver lining it’s that i look forward to waking more than i have, historically (thank you mental illness).

if i had a more morbid sense of humor it would be funny, how even in my unconscious state i can’t seem to escape the omnipotent anxiety powerful enough to entrench my dreams and leave a stain wherever it goes.

nonetheless, sleep will always be a non-negotiable. after sleep-walking through my entire undergraduate career—running on five and a half hours of sleep a night and caffeinated concoctions during the day—i know this now more than ever. my nighttime dreams may never get kinder to me. still, they are a temporary state. and if there’s anything that can permeate my bones with insurmountable fear, it is permanency of any sort. so i guess i’ll just have to continue with dreaming.

-sofi <3

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