A dear friend called me last night. I was reminded how few people call each other these days. When I answered the phone, somebody different was on the other end. Not my friend. Their PTSD. Repeated nightmares. Months of mental torture, internal warfare. They had reached their limits, trapped in an unhealthy setting, a mind that had turned against them. I picked up the slight slur of alcohol. Compassion seated within me.
Already knowing, I asked, “Are you alright?”
“I am shaking. I can’t do it again.” Their voice trembled.
“Do what?”
“I’m so afraid of dreaming again—my nightmare! It’s killing me. I don’t know what to do.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “I can’t fucking do this again! It’s going to take me.”
A recurring nightmare. A passenger in their mind, hijacking them. And I, over a hundred miles away, mostly helpless. The best thing I could offer in place of a hug was my time and my ear. So I stopped my life. I listened. As their soul poured out, emotion after emotion, pain after pain, I wondered if for a second it might penetrate the safety of my own presence. I felt for them. I knew exactly what they were feeling. Fear that has overstayed its welcome. Helplessness so thick it drowns even the air around it.
So I listened harder.
That’s when I noticed it. Repetition. Not just from the alcohol, though that played its part. But the fear. Layered. Pressed down. Folding into itself. Each cycle the same, but somehow heavier, like the weight of it had learned how to settle deeper into their bones.
Their voice shook under the pressure. The same words, the same panic, looping back around. A mind stuck in an echo chamber of its own terror.
I closed my eyes. Listened harder. Let the spaces between their words speak.
And then, finally, they asked—maybe for me, maybe just to hear something different in the air.
“I don’t know what to do?”
A question, raw and exposed in it’s statement. The silence that followed wasn’t just empty—it was desperate. I could feel it reaching, grasping for something to hold onto.
My breath steadied. My voice followed.
“Breathe.”
Nothing. Just shaking breaths on the other end.
“Your emotions have you running right now. Are you here with me?”
A pause. A hesitation. And then, a barely-there “I think so.”
They had told me the dream. The nightmare—one I wouldn’t even dare transfer into words. Because the details didn’t matter. It was never about the monsters in the dark—it was about the mind believing they were real.
“Go into the dream, you can change things” I said. “You know it is a dream. Change the way it makes you feel. Accept it. It cannot hurt you if you stand against what you do not want to believe. But you have to believe that.”
A long silence.
And then, a breaking. A whisper, splintered and hollow.
“I can’t.”
Not tonight.
A sound stirred in the background—soft, small. My son had woken up. Reality pulled me back, splitting me between worlds.
I swallowed. My voice softened.
“I love you. I’m here. And I’ll be here tomorrow.”
It was all I had left to give.
The call ended.
And now, I sit here, remembering. Writing. Breathing.
Because sometimes, survival is just making it through the night. ❤️🩹