They call them night terrors when you get them during sleep.
I get them and have had them for years.
Not every night, but many times over the years.
They make me bolt up into a sitting position from (what I think) is a dead sleep, freaking out.
Like I'm having a nightmare I didn't realize I was having until it blasts me off the pillow.
A lot of the time that I do sleep, I don't feel like I'm sleeping. I can still hear noises and anything that's going on around me, and my brain doesn't want to shut off. And I'm supposedly sleeping!
It seems like when the night terror thing happens, I am dreaming about fire, and from what I recall, this is what the dream is about. Most times, but not all the time.
What I notice too that is very creepy, is that I can smell something burning while I'm sleeping, which seems to trigger me to wake up. Like something is burnt. But NOTHING is burning in the house.
Think of the smell of burnt toast or smoldering wood.
Acrid like that.
The burning smell is so real, I jump up in the middle of the night from sleep, very anxious and terrified because of "whatever I smell burning", and try to find the fire so I can put it out, or escape it. Which means that there are times I am frantically trying to find where the fire is, down the hall, in other parts of the house, etc.
But there is never any fire, thank God.
Is that not bizarre?
The smell is the thing I remember more than the actual details of the dreams themselves.
But the sudden fright gets my heart racing and my breathing gets all out of whack when it happens.
This burnt odor is very distinct, really unpleasant.
And that's the detail I remember clearly long afterward.
Night terrors leave me feeling shaken in the morning and very tired.
It's like my body fights relaxation, fights sleep, even when I do manage to drift off.
My brain always wants to be on guard, always watching, always alert, whether I want it to or not.
Even if I don't feel alert and I'm wiped out.
I don't understand it or why it happens on some nights and not on other nights.
Which is one reason I tend to stay up late.
Sometimes this stops for a while, maybe a couple of months, but then out of the blue, it will happen again.
It's a very strange thing. I wish it would stop.
And no, I don't suffer from sleep apnea.