Returning to Nightmares

The past two nights I've had strange nightmares. The nightmares themselves had very typical content (my ex being distant while in a great deal of peril & me teaching a class and losing control of it while my voice doesn't work), but the strange part of them was that when I woke up, I wanted to go back into them to finish them. That's a stark contrast from most nightmares, where they leave my heart aching and a deep sadness bubbles up that I can only find in the twilight between waking and sleeping. These both felt unfinished, as if I had more to do in them. And I kind of wonder what that means.

The beginning of the school year is always stressful, and this certainly look to be the busiest I've ever had: teaching a new class at UTK, leading the high school Sunday School at church, doing my presdissertation, taking my own courses, having nine clients, co-chairing a subcommittee for the LGBT Commission, organizing Trans 101 content to put online, organizing a Trans Day of Remembrance, recovering from surgery/dilating multiple times a day, etc. I get why I'm stressed. And when I'm stressed, I have nightmares.

But why do I feel like I want to go back inside them? Do I want closure? Am I starting to feel like I have the power to effect change that I couldn't before? Certainly part of me is afraid that teaching college will produce similar results to when I taught high school; I have so many nightmares about when classes where I was the sole person in charge would just get out of control, where I could feel the students sharpening their knives and jabbing jabbing jabbing as more and more blood flowed. And I don't know that I'll fully move on from S until I have someone else I can love.

But I guess I'll take it as a positive, that I feel like I'm better able to fight my dragons as opposed to being ravaged by them. I guess we'll find out how true that is on Thursday.