It was during my teen's that I began to dream about war on U.S. soil. It was very real, lots of blood and gore and death. A lot of fear and confusion was in the air, along with anger, grief, and sheer panic. There was a lot of fire and smoke and chaos and destruction. All I could see were uniforms, no insignia, nothing I could identify. Years later through repetitive dreams I realized the "enemy" was us truly, our very own military.

I also had dreams that involved the immediate future in my own life. Early in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school I started dreaming that I was attending a much larger school than the one in which I was enrolled. The main parts of the building had at least 2 stories and I felt alone among a lot of strangers.

As it turned out my world got pretty much turned upside down that summer and because of it I was put in that same exact school that fall. I hated it, I only knew a small handful of students there from elementary and junior high.

My senior year I had to deal with a lot of physical pain and this affected both my sleep and my dreams. My dreams became even more violent and bloody. I would have enough of the nightmares sometime between 3 and 4 AM, and lay there awake for several hours waiting for the alarm clock to go off. I was in severe pain most of the day, everyday. I was getting depressed because the doctor I was going to wasn't helping at all and I continued to get worse.

I wanted to die, I hurt that bad. For whatever reason the pain was always worse after lunch period. I hurt so much I couldn't concentrate enough to read, and after attempting to read the same paragraph for the fifth time, I stopped and said to myself, "I wish I could stop hurting for just 5 minutes."

The next thing I knew I was looking down at myself looking at my book and the others in the classroom. I went through the window and felt so free, there was no pain until I slipped back into my body right before the bell rang.

I told my sister about my experience and described the place I had "visited" and she asked me if I was high. LOL

My mother thought the pain was making me go crazy and she called a different doctor. He put me on a sleeping pill and some nerve medication, but I still woke up at 3 or 4 in the morning, and I was still in a lot of pain.

I ended up in the hospital a week later and my new doctor found the problem and I took some medication and was completely pain free within four months.

One night Mom and I watched a movie she had rented named "Red Dawn", and I started crying and got upset. She looked at me and I said, "This is like what I dream!" It wasn't exactly the same, but it was very similar.

At one point I stopped watching movies that had anything to do with war, I saw more than I cared for in my dreams at night and I just didn't feel like watching it while I was awake too.