my grandma has been haunting me for the past ten years of my life (7-22-22)

 i sleep on my dead grandmothers bed. i know this might sound perverted, but my family is cheap. all of my furniture is either from goodwill or passed on from a relative. the previous mattress i slept on was my mothers childhood twin mattress, meaning the mattress was over thirty years old. i'm not fucking kidding, it was the worst fucking bed. it is how a thirty year old mattress would feel in your head. 

i would sleep on my twin mattress and eventually move into my parents dog bed. the mixture of being afraid of any sound that my nineteen forties home made and my unadmitted fear of darkness, alongside broken box springs, i couldn't sleep for the majority of my childhood. i hated sleeping for most of my adolscence, setting timers at seven am in the morning because i knew i wouldn't be able to sleep for any longer than that (also anxiety, but another day). so in twenty thirteen my grandmother died, and her entire apartment of nursing home furniture had to be sorted. someone asked if anyone wanted the mattress, my parents asked me, i said yes. 

the mattress was actually semi-brand new. she had previously lived in a small two bedroom home in fredonia with a small front yard, but she turned eighty and could no longer take care of her flowers. they bought completely new furniture to go into her port view apartment that was next to the culvers. at most, the mattress was three years old. that is all i will justify myself, there is no bed bugs. 

i find myself thinking about this mattress too often, or the possible fact that someone is assaulting me in my sleep and living in my attic. i don't want to explore the ladder too much. when i originally went to sleeping in a dorm, i was afraid of the bed the most. i hadn't been on a twin in years and the mattress was thin. my grandmothers mattress made me fall asleep within thirty minutes and not two hours with all the thoughts running in my head. i loved my grandmothers mattress. it was one of the attributes that made my life transform into one where i didn't think of ways to get through the day before i even woke up. 

sleeping in this mattress makes me wake up in sweat, deranged hair, and every article of thing on my bed appear on the floor. i sprawl my legs across the entirity of the queen sized bed and poke my feet out from under the covers, and enjoy sleep. my mattress might of been the first thing i decided that i loved. i originally thought that it was my grandmothers doing, that i was getting a warm embrace from her spirit before bed. especially on friday nights, comforting me on the fact that i wouldn't be seeing her the next saturday morning with her blue car parked on my front lawn. the thing that would bring me the most peace would be sleep and it was her last wish to give to me. 

unfortunately, i think i am being morally punished for my actions with this mattress. i think my grandmother watched my first year in college and looked upon me for hanging around the wrong people (she was homophobic and racist, she voted with democrats somehow). or maybe she disagreed with the way that i treat people and act, which is probably more true if i'm being honest with myself. i haven't had sex on this mattress, so it cannot be that. oh. i unfortunately thought of another outcome that could be an exclamation (find the connection from the last threat). 

recently, i average around two nightmares a night. nightmares that i wake up and have to open tiktok for the next thirty minutes until my mind is mush and i am a member of the algorithm and forget about the entirety of the dream. putting all the lights back on to check for people staring and watching me in my room. unable to leave my room to face the fears of the upstairs hallway dreams. i had started these crippling nightmares about ten years ago, but the frequency has become apparent in the past three months. 

the nightmares are dystopian in nature usually. or an immoral action. always involving a form of life being threatened or death. the most recent one that i remembered because i swore that my mind stole it from a television show was about killing people with a remote, it was very black mirror. and only i could use the remote sometimes, for some reason, and people were following me around this minecraft like island that had no escape except for the neverending void. and i was eventually caught at the end. 

there are also ones that are much simplier. my brother pulling out a gun and attempting to shoot me in a school, but him unable to as i push the gun out of his hands. it is anxiety wrecking, as we are pushed down in a skateboard motion with his body on top of me as i have to shoot him three times before he is finally down and unable to kill any children. 

my dreams are only consisting of nightmares recently. i cannot get any dreams that are even neutral. the ones that are seemingly neutral turn out to be nightmares in the end. sidenote. i am writing this in the dark and think i might be schizophrenic sometimes with the level of paranoia i have. i have to turn on the lights because i feel like someone is watching me in my closet. 

the most neutral form of dream that i remember is my almost possible lucid dream. i was drunk, fucked up in this dream. i had all the feelings and vision of being drunk in the dream as you have in real life, and everything is already foggy in dream form. i somehow drove myself to plymouth, which i have never done before without directions, to my aunt and uncles house. their entire house was dark with a large movie screen in their twenty foot walls. i remember saying to them, "this is a dream" and them saying some bullshit about the movie and completely ignoring what i was saying. i drove back to port in the dark woods, and somehow made my way back to plymouth. i was entirely coherent that i was in a dream, i felt so present in the dream despite being drunk. 

i have had strange anxiety recently but it hasn't been the peak of my life. i'm not sure how i feel about dream reading and encoding, as most of it has no scientific evidence that backs it. i don't believe in ghosts and i never have but is it possible that i could be facing my immoral actions from someone who watched me before i turned into a monster? am i being held accountable in a space that i have no control over because they know the thing that i crave the most is control? am i being speared onto a wooden plank over a body of water filled with my infidelities and lies, being threatened to watch myself suffer in a mirror from above?

lately it's been feeling like everything is catching up to me. there is a rock in my throat that has arisen from my stomach and its choking the life out of me. i lately pray for peace and find nothing inside the meaningless words and pages. the rain continues to fall down on my life and i cannot journal myself out of it. it hurts, that in an unconcious, uncontrollable state, i still cannot control my emotions.