Descending Dread
A recurring nightmare, equal parts absurd and terrifying, offers an unsettling metaphor for the slow, looming nature of my anxiety.
On particularly anxious nights, my subconscious stages a theatrical production starring a human-sized spider, dangling ominously above my bed. The thing descends with excruciating slowness, a spectacle of suspense so drawn out it seems as though it will never actually reach me. And I’ve never actually discovered what happens if it does. Oddly enough —even though I am convinced its arrival would be anything but a cause for celebration—I do not suspect it wants to bite, consume, or entrap me; it is its mere existence in close proximity that spells dread.
More than once, I have startled myself awake mid-scene, already standing beside the bed, gesturing wildly at my still blissfully sleeping wife as I try to articulate an urgent, apocalyptic warning about the hideous menace that, I then realize, is not actually there.
Oh, well. Reluctantly back to bed, then.
These episodes leave me disoriented for a few minutes, as if I have just returned from an out-of-body experience in which my sleeping husk did not have the courtesy to consult me on. What fascinates me, however, is my unwavering instinct to flee. Fight or flight, they say—yet I have never once considered brawling with my whatever-number-legged guest. Nor have I entertained the possibility of simply lying there, allowing the dread to descend upon me in some twisted act of radical acceptance.
A horrifying proposition, I know. But lately, I have been experimenting with this very approach. Take, for instance, my bouts of vertigo: once a trigger for mild panic and desperate, whispered bargains with the god of the universe, are now an invitation for nonchalance. “Fine,” I tell it, “take me for a spin”. This does not cure the dizziness, but it does make the whole experience slightly less like an existential crisis and more like an unfortunate amusement ride.
…Nor have I entertained the possibility of simply lying there, allowing the dread to descend upon me in some twisted act of radical acceptance.
I am not usually one to believe that every dream harbors a deep, symbolic message waiting to be decoded. Some are simply the brain’s equivalent of a cat knocking things off a table just to see what happens. But in this case, I will permit myself the indulgence of interpretation:
The spider is my anxiety, an exaggerated, grotesque, revoltingly bloated specter that looms above. Promising catastrophe without ever quite defining it. And perhaps the only way to rob it of its power is to stop resisting. To let it descend, settle in, and reveal itself for what it truly is:
A big, ugly nothing.