Metadreaming

I have a tendency to post here about more personal things when I'm upset, rather than my livejournal. Just a warning to those of you expecting me to write about things that might be vaguely interesting in some context. Also a warning- sometimes my dreams are weird and kind of disgusting.

I rarely have recurring dreams; I used to not have them at all, but they've grown more common. Last summer I had work dreams; this summer, I've had numerous dreams about losing teeth. Not losing them in the second grade, "Oh! A loose tooth!" sort of way, no- these are nightmares, and I never used to have those, either. I dream of losing my teeth in an aching, bloody mess- first one goes a little loose, and then my teeth and gums just dissolve. I'll touch my teeth with my tongue to feel them sore and barely there, like a mouthful of cherry pits or chips of stone. Closing my mouth is agony, because the dangling edges of my teeth grate against each other, bone on bone. One will fall out and then the rest will follow, all at once, and it hurts. But the pain isn't as bad as the panic that comes from seeing all that blood and bone in the sink or in my hand.

The other night I dreamed that I was dreaming about losing my teeth; I woke up in my dream, relieved to see that it wasn't true- and then it happened in the reality of the dream. Then I woke up from that dream, because the feeling of my mouth falling apart is always disturbing and frightening enough to shock me out of sleep. Occasionally I wake up crying, but I can't quite say why, exactly, these dreams terrify me so much.

I've been injured in my dreams before, sometimes graphically so; it's never pleasant, but there's never any sort of recurring theme to dreams that involve pain. If I do wake up, it's because of the pain, not the fear; even my unpleasantly painful dreams are usually fascinating. Losing my teeth doesn't hurt much, but when the only thing I can taste in my mouth is blood and the feathery edges of my gums, it doesn't need to hurt. I'll be the first to admit that I'm really something of a wuss- but all of my various phobias are very minor, and these dreams induce a level of panic that my low-level claustrophobia and social anxiety will never approach, not even if I find myself stuck in a collapsing tunnel with a hundred strangers.

...Okay, maybe not quite that bad. Because that would actually be pretty fucking awful. But it's still horrible.

I haven't been sleeping well, which is the primary cause of the bad dreams and my current inability to string sentences together properly. (The not-sleeping-well causes the dreams, mind you, not the other way around.)

There's more wrong, of course, but I can't find the words to express it. I hate that feeling- I'm clumsy enough with words as it is, but this feeling of complete and utter impotence is endlessly frustrating.

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm completely exhausted- but I don't want to go to sleep.