Dreaming My Nights Away

For two months straight, I've been having extremely long, complicated dreams every single night. Is this normal? I've always been a pretty heavy dreamer and sometimes my dreams are so vivid, especially the recurring ones, when I think back on them, they're more like memories that can stir up emotions and everything. There are dreams I've had between the ages of five and ten that I still can recall today.

I also used to be plagued with nightmares, so many in fact that my greatest fear as a kid was when I hadn't had one in over a week. It's like your period; you think, "Oh crap, it's been too long. I just know it's going to come any day now," except that I'd actually lie in bed trembling with fear and dread (not that having one's period is a night at the ballet or anything, but it's not exactly a terrifying sort of blood-letting, is it). My nightmares, however, were entirely attributable to all the horror movies my brothers and I watched from a far-too-early age. Every stupid kissing scene on the Love Boat, I was told to cover my eyes; while Jason on his usual slaughter spree was somehow okay, if "a bit noisy, kids." My brothers and I could actually scream the lines of Friday the 13th right alongside Jamie Lee Curtis ("The keys! The keys!"). I'll never forget one grueling dream I had though of being stalked by Freddy Krueger for what felt like half the night. Only, when Freddy finally caught up with me, it turned out he just wanted my help to find his little boy, who had been kidnapped by an Egyptian queen. After that, he was very sweet, though naturally anxious about his son. Somehow Nightmare on Elm Street was never as scary after that.

Although I'm not sure exactly when, somewhere along the way, all that dreaming eased up. I still have on occasion a few of the same dreams I've had since I was six, but for a long time I would wake up with only a vague notion that I had dreamed; and during one period of my life, it seemed as if I stopped dreaming altogether.

But two months ago, all those stoppered-up dreams came spilling out. Every night feels like a movie marathon, and I wonder if my waking up exhausted each morning is connected. My husband says I'm recalling every dream because I'm sleeping shallow, and he thinks I'm sleeping shallow because I'm sleeping too much. I say he's just jealous because his work doesn't allow him the necessary number of hours of sleep that a normal human being requires.

I'm curious as to whether my excessive dreaming is connected to the hayfever medication I've been on--I also began taking it about two months ago. Although I woke up sniffling and sneezing this morning, hayfever season should be coming to an end--finally!--and with it my drug-enslaved existence. After that, we'll see what happens to the dreams.