my worst nightmare

For a good part of my life I had a dream that used to freak me out, even specially when I was awake.

It was basically a recurrent dream where I would be repeatedly crushed by a giant gear system (a cartoon like, flatten image of myself). There was no pain whatsoever, in fact, what really bothered me was the soundtrack, I can’t really describe it very well, it was an endless loop with a very specific pattern, imagine some kind of techno beat with metallic sounds and lots of reverberation.

The reason it freaked me out so much was because I recognized that pattern in people’s speech patterns, or in construction site sounds, or in traffic sounds, or even in a “silent” room. It happened more often when I was sleep deprived or in a caffeine rush, or just plain tired.

It would make me feel weird and inadequate at first, then some sort of panic, and soon enough sick to my stomach. Of course, once I recognized said pattern I would try to avoid it as much as I could because I simply could not break the loop in my head.

To this day this will happen eventually, it is not as hard as it used to be when I was a kid or teenager, but it still freaks me enough that I need to almost go deaf listening to music to overcome the stupid pattern. And yes, I am writing this because it is happening today.