Bad dreams. Everyone has them. But does everyone have “night terror” experiences?

Occasionally I will have a dream that is so scary and so realistic that I act out physically in real life. I call these experiences “night terrors.” They’re different from regular bad dreams in that instead of just waking up with your heart racing and maybe a small gasp, you do something extreme and noisy like you would if this “night terror” were actually in the room with you. They aren’t just bad scenarios; they are physical bad things getting near to you so that you feel the need to physically react to them.

This is kind of what the crab in my dream looked like. Photo by bob in swamp (flickr.com)

Last night I had the first night terror I’ve had in a year or so. It was a doozy. I dreamed that there was a large black crab-like thing quickly coming toward me. I don’t remember anything else from the dream, no chase scenes or character development. Just a huge scary crab trying to attack me. In my dream, I was in bed and the crab was about to crawl over the blanket onto me.

Apparently I screamed in real life, “snaked” off the bed at top speed, opened both the door to the bathroom and the door to the living room, and army crawled into the living room before I fully woke up. All of this took about 5 seconds because I was in such desperation to get away from the giant crab.

When I became fully awake, on the floor in the living room, Matt was sitting behind me asking, “What’s wrong? What is it? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly. I was definitely awake now, but I could have sworn that the crab was real. But if Matt was asking me what was wrong, he obviously didn’t see a crab, so it must have been a dream, right?

“What happened?” he asked again.

“Um, there was a large spider or crab-looking thing coming at me,” I said. “I guess it was a dream.”

Here is a major point where night terrors differ from dreams. When I have a dream, I know that it was just a dream when I wake up. Even if things are realistic and people are familiar, I know that I wasn’t just flying or talking to someone in real life. I’m in my bed, and the line between dream and reality is quite clear. But with night terrors, I have to turn on the light and see with my own eyes that whatever was happening right before I woke up is not actually happening in real life. My brain is initially convinced that the terror was completely real.

After realizing that the crab was not real, I went back to bed with Matt. I felt horrible. I had terrified myself and Matt, and we could hear all of our neighbors awake and moving around too. (It was about 4 in the morning.) At first, Matt was kind of mad at me. He thought I had been having a seizure or something since I had screamed so loudly. But when I started crying because I felt so bad for waking everyone up for something so stupid, yet uncontrollable, he apologized and said he was just tired. He prayed for us and asked God to give us peaceful sleep and keep any demonic attacks at bay.

Matt said he sensed an oppressive feeling in the room, so he thought the dream was demonic.

I’m not so sure. I think there have been times when I know I’ve felt demonic oppression in dreams or at night. But I didn’t feel that way last night. I wasn’t upset before I went to bed; I wasn’t particularly stressed out. There are difficult things that I’m dealing with in life right now, of course, but I wasn’t feeling oppressed when I went to sleep or when I woke up.

Who knows? Maybe night terror experiences are always caused by spiritual attack. But I feel like they could also just be the body and brain preparing for extreme situations in real life. Now I know that if I need to, I can escape at top speed from a giant crab. Or at least have the courage and energy to try.

Does anyone else out there have night terrors? Have you woken up and found yourself running from danger, screaming, or fighting to escape? Do you think these experiences are a normal part of life, or something darker?

About that staying-on-task thing…blogging took a backseat to vacation (and consequential catching up from vacation) these past few weeks.

The week before Easter, we visited some family members in Arizona. We had a great time with my uncle Kris, aunt Trish, and cousin Nicole. They moved to Arizona last fall, so we thought we would take a vacation to see them and get some respite from a not-nearly-warm-enough Chicago spring.

It was fun relaxing by the pool (in 90-degree-heat), playing games, and seeing the sights. Matt and I hiked a mile and a half into the Grand Canyon. We were toying with the idea of going all the way down and camping overnight, but time and cost stood in the way. We would like to hike all the way down someday, though. I guess that is the first official thing on my “bucket list.” (I’ve never had one before.)

Item #2 on my bucket list will be finishing this confounded book. Speaking of which, my survey is now 110% anonymous, so if you haven’t yet filled it out, click here to answer some questions about childhood/adolescent views of sexuality. All questions are optional.

Well, I have to get back to some work I’m doing now, but just wanted to throw a blog post out there to say we’re back and waiting for Chicago to warm up! It’s been sunny this week at least, but I can’t wait for tank top weather!

When I have time, I’ll get our AZ pictures on Facebook, but for now, here’s a teaser:

(Click to enlarge.)

So far this time of not working has been a lot busier (and better) than two years ago when I spent about two months not working.

The last time, Matt and I had just married and moved into our new apartment. We hadn’t been at Calvary for very long, and most of my friends were working during the day. I would spend all day unpacking and organizing our apartment with little interaction (PS doesn’t count, she sleeps too much during the day). So when Matt would get home, it was definitely the highlight of my day. I felt like a repressed 1950′s Stepford wife.

I was a little afraid some of those feelings might come back this time. But I’ve actually had the opposite – plenty to fill my days. I have a couple of friends in the area who are job searching or in school, and it’s been wonderful to catch up with them and have some company during the day. We’re also much more integrated into our church now, so there are always plenty of people I can connect with. I’m still working on my book manuscript and I’m also doing a few website projects for friends and family.

My brain is a lot more engaged this time around – with relationships and with work. I’m grateful that God is giving me this time to accomplish a lot and to invest in relationships that I just didn’t have as much time for before.

Recently, Matt and I have started sharing three things with each other that we’re thankful for at the end of each day. It’s a time to focus on the blessings God has given us, since it’s far too easy to dwell on the challenges and trials of life.

What are you thankful for today?

Well, I was going to try to fit all of this into a Facebook status update, but I figured that would get ridiculously long. So here’s a blog post instead (for our five readers…I’ll have to work more on SEO and advertising our blog)

I should have plenty of time for blogging now since I got laid off yesterday. The awesome part is that if I want my severance pay, I have to keep working for the next 2 weeks, but then I get paid for another month beyond that. So the next 2 weeks are going to be pretty miserable since every time I see my bosses, I get angry and every time I see my coworkers, there are tears and sympathy glances.

After the 2 weeks of working are finished, I think it will feel a lot sweeter to have free time and get stuff done. And hopefully I will be able to forget about the bazillion hours of unpaid overtime and tears, sweat, and frustration wasted for nothing. Right now while I’m still working, it’s hard to forget about it. Matt will still working there, which might be a little hard, but he thinks he can deal with the uh, management style.

In other news, we ordered an Xbox Kinect last week from Best Buy and it arrived yesterday. So I got fired and got an Xbox all in the same day. Coincidental? I think not.

Matt and I played the 2 games we have last night (Dance Central and Kinect Adventures) and they are super fun and an amazing workout. (Matt said Kinect Adventures could even take the place of his P90x workout for the day, it was so intense.)

Also, I have taken all of this as a sign that I should definitely join the Songwriters Group at my church. So I wrote a song today. It’s called “Morning is Coming (Watch and Pray).”

I’m excited to get back into being creative for the sake of creativity (instead of to sell products), to catch up with old friends, and to get a lot of stuff done around the house that’s been neglected. And of course, to update our blog more regularly! Till next time…

Tonight Angel and I watched The Green Hornet. Our review? Five stars out of five. I loved it for a lot of reasons. Jay Chou and Seth Rogen had real chemistry on screen, it was like watching two friends act together. The actors were quick-witted and the humor was spontaneous. The film moved along at a fast clip, keeping the action and plot flowing.

Sidekick? UMM...okay, I guess...

The real thing that made The Green Hornet freakin’ awesome for me was Kato. Here’s the thing: When The Green Hornet was a T.V. show back in the 60′s, Bruce Lee played Kato. He did a bang up job of it, too, because he knew what he was doing from acting in blockbuster Hong Kong movies. In those movies, Bruce Lee always played the lead role, and he was always tough without regret. Like, kick-you-in-the-face-and-not-care tough. He comes to America, lands this T.V. role as the sidekick to the hero.

Seriously? I think it's pretty obvious how this would turn out.

Now, I don’t have a problem with starting at the bottom and working your way up. I just have a problem with the way that they wrote the role of Kato in the original series. I remember watching the show as a kid, seeing Bruce Lee play Kato, and thinking, “Why is he only the sidekick? What, they’re not partners? Kato’s doing more than half of the work, come on!” In fact, there was a crossover episode with Batman and Robin, also popular at that time (the campy version). In that episode, Robin was supposed to beat Kato. Bruce Lee was like, “No freakin’ way is that going to happen,” and they rewrote the scene as a draw. The whole time the guy who played Robin told him, “Bruce, it’s just a show, we’re just actors, don’t really hurt me.” But seriously, who gets beaten up by Robin?

Fine, things were different back in the 60′s, I get it now. Really though, as an Asian American kid growing up in the Midwestern suburbs, it really made me feel like Asians could never be the heroes and always had to be the lackey.

That’s why I am such a fan of the new Green Hornet movie. Jay Chou killed it as Kato. The whole movie he wanted to be considered an equal, a partner. Because, I think he (as the character and the actor) really deserved it. Kato got his respect.

Of course, I think that Bruce Lee got his respect, too. Who’s more famous, Van Williams or Bruce Lee? No contest. I’m just happy to know that a new batch of Midwestern Asian-American boys will feel a notch higher on the totem pole. Who knows? Maybe in the next decade the hero can be a Chinese guy.