What. The. F**k.

I am dragging today. And since I got a total of two hours sleep last night, it’s no wonder. As if Mondays weren’t hard enough, now I feel like I was hit by a truck.

Want to know what happened last night that kept me awake? (And get your heads out of the gutter – if I was getting action I wouldn’t be bitching to you about my lack of sleep.) Good, that’s the spirit:

OK, so last night started like any other Sunday night. I watched some tv, tried to finish up a book I was supposed to have edited last week, and eventually collapsed in exhaustion. And then, around two in the morning, it happened. A fucking nightmare.

As far as I can tell, there are three kinds of nightmares a person can have: 1) The kind that don’t wake you up, they just leave you feeling like shit the next morning while you remember (sort of) the dream, 2) The kind that wake you in the middle of the night, make you feel uneasy, but don’t stop you from getting back to sleep, and 3) The kind that wake you in the middle of the night, completely freak you out, force you to mentally calm yourself down while your heart races and your skin crawls, and then make it impossible to even begin thinking about going back to sleep. I had a code 3 dream last night.

Essentially, the gist of the dream was that I was asleep in my bed, when I realized that someone was in the room with me. Standing over me. I could hear him breathing, and just as the panic started to hit, he attacked me. I tried to fight and scream, but he was just too strong, and I wasn’t able to make any noise – although I kept trying. A classic really.

As I shot up in bed, instantly awake, I found myself in the exact same dark room and bed as my nightmare. So I scrambled to the door and turned on the light. Then I checked the closet and under the bed (I don’t care how pathetic that sounded), and only after I was satisfied that there was no one in the bedroom did I venture out into the living room. There I turned on all the lights, checked the windows, and tried to control my shaking (yes, I was shaking).

It was at this point that I think I finally accepted it had just been a dream. (Probably the fact that my cat was still asleep on the bed should have been my first clue – there’s no doubt in my mind that if a stranger was in the apartment, she would hide under the bed and let me fend for myself.) Still, I wasn’t exactly feeling calm. In fact, I was sufficiently freaked out. So I kept the lights on, got back into bed, turned on the tv to whatever awful shit is on in the middle of the night (what the fuck do insomniacs watch anyway?), and proceeded to stay awake until my alarm went off. Not my finest (or most adult) evening. But hey, at least I didn’t call my mom.

Now, I’m exhausted. No amount of coffee is going to get me through the afternoon today (I’m willing to bet), and I’m still a little uncomfortable about my dream. I mean, what the fuck? I normally never even remember my dreams. Now I have a fucking doozy of a nightmare, and I lose a night’s sleep? How do I deserve that?

So I’m torturing the rest of you with this. Have you ever had a nightmare that fucked you up into the next day? Because until last night, I hadn’t. And it’s not fun. Ugh.

Happy fucking Monday everyone.