The first few nights were mostly a couple hours of deep sleep and then wide awake at 3:30, heart pounding. On Friday, the 14th, I had a nightmare of being on the beach at Cape Cod, on a beautiful day, when a jet suddenly appeared and sort of hovered over the beach. Everyone scattered and then the jet just dove for the beach.
Last night, I dreamt I was on the beach again, and this time a jet flew overhead with a pair of fighter jets as escorts. Then another jet appeared out of nowhere and just rammed the first jet, knocking a wing off and sending it into the water. We left the beach and got home to find out we were eating dinner with George Bush, Sr. and Barbara Bush. I woke up, heart pounding, again.
Now, I understand all the psychological implications of these dreams, but I was surprised to have another nightmare since it’s been almost three weeks since September 11. I wasn’t in NYC and I don’t know anyone who was killed either there, or D.C., or Pennsylvania. Anyway, is anyone else still having nightmares or sleeplessness or do I need to get what I will euphemistically call “professional help”? Thanks.
Yes, and I don’t live in anywhere near NY, DC or PA. The worst was the dream about the crashed Northwest plane- it wasn’t really a crash, but it looked like a giant foot had crushed it flat like a Coke can.
The rest, I don’t remember, but I am up and down most nights now. A loud noise can wake me. The first week, it was the subway trains that run aboveground next to my complex…they run about every 15 minutes until midnight, then start up again around 4:30.
They’ve faded a bit the last couple of nights, which is good, but I also just found out that two of my college classmates are among those missing. No one I was close to, but it still makes it hit closer than it did. I hope they don’t come back again.
Not about the WTC itself, but other bizarre and/or related things. Like I dreamed that Steve Buscemi appeared on a talk show in his firefighter duds and started crying.
I can tell I’m disturbed and that my mind is chewing on this stuff while I sleep.
Yup. Me too. The first night after coming home from Germany (I got stuck over there due to the cancellation of my flight) I dreamed I could see missiles flying overhead. The next part of the nightmare dealt with strong winds and me becoming sick from radiocativity. Nuclear winter was in there somewhere…
For me, it was just the opposite. For the first few days, I was able to escape from the tragedy in my dreams. I would dream that life was normal, that there had been no tragedy, that there wasn’t going to be a war. Every morning I would wake up feeling happy. Then I remembered what had happened.
About a week after the disaster, my dreams changed. I started dreaming about the tragedies. I dreamed about watching planes crash, and about fires, and about funerals. I dreamed about ground wars and about nuclear explosions. I dreamed that I was watching the war unfold in front of me, and yet I was taking no part in the war. Every morning when I awaken from my dreams about the tragedy, and realize that I was dreaming, I think that the tragedy itself was just a dream. It takes me a few moments to realize that the tragedy was real. How I wish it had only been a dream …
Not a nightmare, but last night I had a dream that I finally openly cried about it.
The first couple of days I had private sobbing episodes but this was like wailing in my wife’s arms and we were in a crowd.
Besides that it’s more like I wake up at 4:00 in the morning and play over terrorist attack and revenge scenarios and get a good head of adrenaline going. 2-3 hours of that and then I’ll get up and start my day. Being outside is good. It’s tapering off.
background: I’m an upper east side resident of Manhattan, passed through the WTC 15 minutes before the first plane hit.
I’ve had a few nightmares, too, but they only started a few days ago. The first ones were vague images of burning buildings. In one of them a skyscraper collapsed.
The most recent one really got to me, though. In this dream, my mom and I were supposed to take a plane somewhere for some kind of family event (I don’t know exactly what). She insisted that I take the plane with her, but I just knew that the plane was going to be hijacked and crash – an FBI agent told us that the flight had been targeted. Eventually I convinced her that I didn’t want to fly and she agreed to let me stay behind, but I couldn’t persuade her not to get on the plane. I begged her not to go, but she insisted. I don’t remember what happened after that.
I think a lot of people have been having nightmares about this, KSO. I don’t think watching the news coverage is helping me at all.
But I can’t get this image out of my head. It comes up whenever I sit quietly.
At work, on one of the floors that took the impact, harming no one, hearing a roar and then and seeing that god awful fireball headed at me. All the while hearing my co-workers that it had already overtaken.
My nightmares tend to be about life here and now, however the most recent one was a disturbing blend of memories from the past and the events of Septeber 11th. My son and his buddies were talking about the WTC and all the boys remembered vacations when they’d seen it. My son told the other boys he’d not been there. I reminded him he had, recalling we’d had lunch in the mall beneath and reminding him of when we’d gone up to meet people I had dealt with from work on the phone who’s office was in one of the towers in 1993. Two nights later I dreamt being present for the attacks, but instead of as we are now, it was as we were then. (i.e. The kid was 6 instead of a tall strapping teenager as he is now and there was a current friend and family in the dream that I didn’t know then.) The dream caused a gasp of fear, cold sweat and a brief bout of the shakes.
I dream of crashing airplanes, wars, fires, death and destruction. The most frightening part is waking up and realizing that these things are really happening, not necessarily as they were in my dream, but they are happening. Our sense of security has been shattered. Regardless of whether we were there, or knew someone there, etc, we are still deeply affected by what happened. My nightmares are bad enough, I can’t imagine what they would be like if I knew someone who was there.
I did have a good dream about it once, as I dozed in a mid-afternoon/early evening short nap. The kind where you can still hear stuff that’s going on around you, and it kinda fits into your dream. I saw Who Wants to be a Millionaire on television, and during the opening music, they were showing shots of the WTC towers, intact, as they were before. All of a sudden I was there, standing in front of them, looking up in awe. I was so happy to see them, because it meant that the attack must have been a nightmare. Unfortunately I woke up then and realized I was just dreaming.
I’ve had collapsing buildings. I also had Bin Laden casing out my aunt’s house, from room to room, seeing if everyone was asleep. I wasn’t; I was just pretending. He went to the kitchen to assemble his gun to kill us all. I lay there trying to figure what to do, finally settling on bolting out of bed and tackling him before the gun was assembled.
That’s when I bolted up in bed. Never did that before.
A few weeks BEFORE the WTC disaster, I dreamt about being vaporized. That’s a common one, actually. What was scarier was the one where I was injected with poison, and was semi-conscious even as my body started shutting down. I woke up out of that, too.
I had a dream that I saw a plane crash into downtown Dallas (I didn’t actually see the explosion, but I saw the plane go down behind some buildings and not come back). I heard on the radio that every major city in the U.S.A. was being attacked in this way, and all the highways were jammed with people trying to get out of town. I got out and started walking but as usual in my dreams I got lost.
I’ve managed to avoid the more graphic images in my dreams, but I have been dreaming about crying people. Sometimes just one person, sobbing, sometimes crowds, men, women, children. I haven’t cried much myself, I feel like I need to, but it also feels as though I would be forcing myself.
What really gets to me is that my life is still so normal. I’m on the other side of the country, I didn’t know anyone, I rarely fly on jets. In the past three weeks, I’m left my job, packed all my belongings, moved to a new city, started a new job–no interruption in my plans. The closest connection I have is that I’ve been to D.C. and NY, I have photos of myself on the WTC.
I hate guilt. I think guilt is a useless emotion, but I am overwhelmed by it because my life has been so lightly touched by this. I think of the thousands of people who died, and those whose lives are devestated by that loss, and I feel so helpless. Worse than helpless, useless. And the longer I feel badly about it, the worse I make myself feel, because I don’t really have a right to be upset. That’s why I’m dreaming of crying people–I can’t touch them, I can’t comfort them, I can’t even come close to them. I just watch them cry.
Somehow, writing a couple of checks and promising myself that I will live a better life just isn’t making it. And I don’t know how to make it better.
I had a dream that I was coming into New York City on a big zepplin, and the World Trade Towers were still there. I thought “I always thought those were the World Trade Towers. I must have been mistaken.” Then I realized that the zepplin was going to crash into them. Only someone hit it with a gun and we went down like a balloon into the Hudson River, and I had to swim to my home in New Jersey.
I started having lucid dreams as a teenager so I don’t really have nightmares anymore. I did have one unsettling dream that week, something about electronic devices capable of altering the timing of nearby traffic lights then exploding. Yeah, I know, I have weird dreams.
Actually, I did have a nightmare related to the WTC tragedy. Except it was with a car and not a plane. I dreamed that everybody I knew was sleeping inside a house and my boyfriend and I had been partying out all night. I was disgustingly drunk and falling over; almost completely unaware of what I was doing.
So my boyfriend changed places with me … he put me in the driver’s seat, started the car and put it on cruise control so that I would drive the car into the houseful of people and kill them. It was really quite scary because he was doing it in this amazingly tender voice. shudder I was able to stop it going through - I had a moment of clarity and got out of the car, saying that I was too sick to drive.
I never have nightmares but I do have really wierd dreams. Like this one I just had where they were re-enacting the crashes. Everybody knew what time it was going to happen so they were all watching. I probably have had them but I only remember the dreams from right before I wake up.
