With a start I awake, beads of sweat trickling down my forehead and I soothe it with a palm, in attempts to relieve myself. Nothing happens. Every picture was just so vivid, oh so clear that almost nothing could be forgotten. It terrifies me, of course, despite that I know that it’s just a bad dream. This has been happening for years and years now. I am better than this. I close my eyes, shut tight, and purse my lips. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. I do this for as many times as I could remember. After a good minute of recomposing myself, I open my eyes again, and that’s when I realize that it’s raining very hard. The violent pitter-pattering of the raindrops on my window’s glass worsens the bubbling nervousness in my chest. Calm down, I tell myself. It’s just the rain.

I swing the blanket to one side and hang my legs on the edge of the bed. Since the bedside table’s within the vicinity of my arm, I grab the bottle that’s perpetually standing there on the table. Bouncing the bottle’s lip on my palm, I take out a pill and swallow it. This should help me get better. It’s an ungodly hour, but I step out of bed and go out of the room.

The first thing I look for is water. They say when you sleep your body loses fluids through sweating, and I drink a lot, depicting that I indeed had lost a lot of water.

I had the dream again. That’s my cue for today.

I don’t go back to sleep for the next hours. I stay up, finding it scary to go back to sleep, afraid that I might never wake up again. Every time my nightmares visit me, I would barely escape. The nightmare would come in different forms—sometimes I’m running, but I don’t even know what’s