My recurring nightmare started when I was five and was frequent, less so as I got older.  But it took a long time to leave me – as long as it took for me to grow up.

The dream was never exactly identical but the outcome always the same.  I am about 5 or 6 and my brother 4 and we are playing together and my mother  needs to go shopping.  She drops us off at a neighbor’s house.  I beg her not to, because I am instinctually afraid of the lady but she won’t listen and leaves us there to play. Invariably I explore the large house and come to a heavy door that I can push open just enough to get into the room.  Inside the room are long tables laid out in rows and on the tables are giant, white silken cocoons.  Dozens of them.  I walk carefully around the room and find one that is not fully formed – looking in, I see a child inside.  I look up and  the raftered ceiling is filled with spiders.  Terrified, I run out, grabbing my brother and fleeing the house.

Things of the dream would change here – sometimes I would run straight to my mother, sometimes a neighbor, or a police officer, or a teacher.  I would have to take more and more complex escape routes as I grew older (although I stayed a child in the dream), but still always running and always with the need to protect my brother from the witch.  Eventually I would find some adult and tell them that there was a witch who would kill us and ask them to bring us back to my mother.  Sometimes they did or sometimes they didn’t – but no matter which adult I told they would listen, and promise me it would be alright, and put us in the police car, or their car, or my mom’s car to take us home.  We’d get out of the car and as we walked up the path the door to the house would open, and there would be the witch, smiling and waiting for us.  And whatever adult we were with, even my mother,  would just hand us back over and tell me it would be alright. My brother aand I were going to be killed, and no one would listen.  I woke up at that moment every time – at the moment of ultimate betrayal.

 I woke up crying in desperation and frustration every single time, tears pouring down my face, sometimes sobbing.

The last time I had the dream I was in my early 20s, living in my first apartment with roommates but on my own, as an adult.  I woke up in the same panic stricken terror as I had every othr time. I was sobbing and I swore I was never ever going to have that dream again – and I never did.

To this day, I am terrified of spiders. To this day, I don’t have nightmares – ever.