Night Terrors.

These things suck terribly.
I've been living free from them for a long time, but there was a time in my life where I was having them several times per week. Science has always seemed unsure of what causes them. For me I know exactly what causes them. Disrupted sleep cycles...waking up and going to bed at random times. I've been awake from this one for about 5 minutes now, and I'm scared to go back to sleep.
I started getting them when I was younger and I had insomnia. I'd force myself to sleep, and invariably wind up having one of these conscious nightmares.
I eventually learned how to recognize that a dream was going to turn into one, and I'd wake myself up before I was caught in the feeling of being paralyzed and dying in my sleep.
I think it was on my first sales job that I realized just how damaging they had been. The regular hours of the sales job meant no more nightmares.
I also noticed I wasn't going crazy as regularly. That was about 9 years ago.
This week I worked 4 day shifts, and 1 night shift. 1 day later I'm waking up screaming in the middle of the night with my wife gently tapping on my back and telling me I'm okay like she used to do (she still remembers the old routine...get to a safe distance and poke me every few seconds, then jump back because I might come out of it swinging)
Here was tonight's freaky bullshit nightmare (which I'm going to write about, because I'm terrified to try sleeping again.)
It started with me trying to get somewhere, not sure where, and I was moving through an alleyway, in an old Saskatoon neighbourhood of old houses.
Somebody was moving out of one of the houses, and their stuff was blocking the alley. Their garage door was open, so I went in through there, and found myself in the stranger's house. I moved through a few houses this way, sometimes just leaving a room before a stranger entered. Soon the houses morphed into one big house, and my family was living in it, and had been living in it for a long time. It was a big old monstrosity, and I was walking around the top floor one day I got the creepiest feeling that other people had been there, and I could feel their presence. I'm getting goosebumps right now at just what a strange and creepy feeling this is. I then noticed that we had never unpacked most of our things from the day that we had moved in.
I was in a room that contained our exercise equipment and a bunch of boxes when I heard someone in the hallway, and in fun I ran out of the room to scare them. The person was a stranger, and I laughed after having startled them...there was nothing unusual about this stranger being in my house apparently. He was kind of angry and he stormed off, and I was laughing away to myself, when suddenly the compulsion to run screaming back into the room I'd just left grabbed hold of me. I ran in screaming, and stood in the room screaming, unable to stop, and my screams began to change. I couldn't move, but I could feel my legs starting to burn. It became clear to me that a little girl had burned to death in the house, and her spirit was still there and had possessed me. I was burning to death as well, and screaming for help, and flames were starting to blaze all over the room. I still couldn't move, and I was screaming a more high pitched scream. At about this point I realized I was in a night terror, but I couldn't get out of it, and now I was screaming so that Janet would be able to hear me and shake me awake. I was screaming so much that I could feel my back rippling (it made sense in the dream), and then that rippling turned to Janet nudging me and then I could hear her saying "you're okay, you're okay."
I fucking hate those things.