To Sleep or Not to Sleep

I've always been one of those people who either enjoyed sleep or suffered from nightmares. Too many times my dreams turn into nightmares where I find myself fighting for my soul in a hellish abyss. Am I alone? Not according to my Facebook and Twitter Direct Messages.

As I mature -- code for getting crap older -- sleep is more desirable, but the need doesn't make any difference. Desirable yes, but there are times when I'm afraid to sleep.

I dream about monsters, and not the sexy ones (okay sometimes not the sexy ones but that's another blogging it tale). When I dream about the evil monsters, I have the good sense to keep my eyes closed. Somehow I just know that they are leaning over my face. I just know that if I open my eyes and actually see what they look like, the terror would turn my hair white and clean out my brain. I’m safer if I keep my eyes closed. Weird.

Still if the day-to-day stress attaches itself to me and I get worked up, then I know that sleep, good or bad, will be elusive. I can be trapped in this no-sleep cycle for days. Or nights. I will turn into a zombie -- minus the flesh-eating, of course, until I get a good night's sleep. So I need to sleep. It is unavoidable.

Here's the other thing: as I mature (there's that statement again) my ability to tell the difference between my waking and dream worlds have started to blur. I'm losing my reality filter.

I can't fully explain the scariness of the moment when I realized that I'm trapped in a dream. Even if the dream is pleasant, in that moment of deep REM, it will shift into something horrific, like a school bus sized cobra slithering on top of the ocean straight at me. What kind of sense does that make? Doesn't have to...it's a nightmare. 

Is the bleeding from reality into fantasy normal? Or is this a breakdown in my gray matter?

If I died in my sleep would I know it? This is the ultimate question for me. Would my nightmares cause my death and if so, how would I know that I'm dead?