Last night, I was watching a chill streamer. I was high, a little drunk, maybe too cozy. I was finally letting myself unwind. There was no work waiting for me in the morning, no messages I needed to answer. My body felt like water for the first time in months.

When I fell asleep, I dreamed of that same streamer being bludgeoned to death. Not once, not briefly, over and over again. It looped. I remember the squirming, the sound of bone hitting bone, the violent rhythm of it. I just stood there and watched in horror. In the next dream, people were trying to break into my house. They weren’t knocking. They were kicking the windows, pushing through the broken glass. None of the doors would lock. Every space felt exposed. No corner felt unreachable.

I slept for hours and woke up wrecked, like I’d been torn open and stitched back up the wrong way. My body felt bruised, even though nothing had touched me.

Why does my brain conjure gore and fear right after I feel relaxed? I think something inside me doesn’t fully recognize safety unless it’s paired with fear. My nervous system doesn’t know what to do with stillness. It fills the silence with terror just to keep me alert.

Maybe somewhere deep inside, my brain still believes that if I fully let go, something terrible will happn again.

So it keeps painting blood over the walls. Just in case.