"Hey, what'up Shive!" My manager Wendi high five me in the 5am morning as we made our way to the coffee shop. I wasn't clearly awake or even focused as I missed her hand with my own. "Whoa! There....you still sleeping?" Wendi asked in chuckle and I nodded in frustration. I knew that usually I was a morning person alive with energy and conversations, smiling and moving smoothly to setup the coffee. I mumbled now trying to wake up my own coffee cup wasn't helping as I explained back "I had a really rough night again, I suffer from these night terrors...saw an episode on Oprah about it and that is what I have!" Wendi unlocked the gate to our shop and looked at me in this understanding real way,she was not distracted and not annoyed. My husband warned not everyone wants to know about my freakishness, it could cause them to judge me or think I am truly odd if I talk like it was normal to have night terrors. BUT I explained back to him that if I don't share this issue about me screaming in the middle of the night at the same hour almost every time, then the unknown of it all will eat away at me and I will wonder if I am actually crazy when I know I am not.
"Night terrors Shively? tell me the details what happen last night?" Wendi asked as we worked side by side I sighed with a few tears in my eyes, I had been searching for peace over these terrors almost a decade now....my poor Husband and dog slept next to me every night worried as they drifted off to sleep that soon I will be screaming. It was getting so bad that I would warn people, especially family, if I slept over at their house I could have a night terror.
I cleared my throat explaining "Last night was the biggest group of people I have ever seen at the edge of my bed, shadows of these people in all shapes and sizes were leaning into me as I slept. I can never see their face but they look so REAL! When my eyes flutter open I see my bedroom around 3am in the gray, dark way of real time but then usually there is a person standing right in front of me moving faster then is normal towards me, usually it just one person a guy in blue jean or an old lady reminding me kinda of my Grandma....I dunno but I never see their faces or hear anything. It's so startling that I scream usually once I realize they are there, then I look again the shadows are gone and my poor family is wide awake then I sob, every time I cry so hard knowing it was just a dream BUT my eyes are really open at the time and see the real bedroom in real time....it's so confusing!....Maybe I am going to crazy!" I sighed helplessly with an awkward chuckle at how silly it is for me to make such a big deal over what Oprah said is very common in high stress people. Wendi smiled with a calm nod and said something that has stayed with me ever since. "Why don't you ask them next time, what do you want from me? because chances are they see you in your real open honest way, not distracted not busy only they might not mean to make you scream like that so once you scream they hide away. Don't let anyone tell you that it isn't real, it is real for YOU, what you see no one can tell you how to interrupt it. What needs to be figured out now is why do they visit you? Is it a warning or a guidance that you are chosen to see them? Once you loose the fear, once you don't scream at the sight of their surprise shadows then you may discover these are not terrors at all....." I loved my friend Wendi in talking about these things so kindly and open. In her way of explaining it I was not cursed, not crazy or weird. These night terrors came to me on the days I was exhausted, both emotionally and physically. This was when I saw the shadows and felt the presence of eyes watching me as I opened my own wondering in my sleepiness "Who is that? Is someone here in our bedroom?...." Then the realization that yes someone is! Always made me scream out and try to protect my family while I swung my arms and kick my legs at the shadows so real looking then instantly gone make me feel so silly and sad. Now after listening to Wendi as she explained that she doesn't claim to know the spiritual world, there are some things that we can't ever explain nor try to logically make sense of it all at least not at once.....but she does believe certain things happen for a reason, that some souls can see into other worlds. But maybe all I had to do was just ask then I might find out why I am visited by shadows in the night. That line of people in and around my bed were familiar and terrifying all at the same time, it was the biggest group that had ever visited me! I look back in remembering them while asking "What do you want from me? What can I do to help?" It's in my heart to make peace, to do what is right for the unknown worlds around us. Suddenly I am not afraid of these figures when they appear and they don't move fast at me anymore.
Last summer when my mother's stroke happened one extremely late night I saw a shadow of a person looking like my Grandma just before I fell a sleep in such stress and worry, this shadow looked like my mother's mother....so I didn't scream or hide away, I just whispered to my bedroom wall where I saw this shadow so real like I could reach out and touch her in the darkness, I just whispered "Keep her safe....no matter what, please keep her safe" the figure didn't loom over me or stay long and I haven't had a vision, or a night terror since.
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