My Dreams Are Exhausting

When you go to bed at night you expect to rest, however, I find myself more exhausted when I wake up.  Even though I don't remember most of my dreams, I know that they are the reason I am so tired.  However, I don't know how to stop myself from dreaming.

It's funny, I can remember bits and pieces of my dreams.  I know most of the time I'm running from someone, or I'm trying to fix a problem in my dream.

I also know that my dreams are mostly my fault because I have a habit of reading books before I go to sleep or watch a very vivid, action filled TV show.

Most of the time my dreams intersperse action with something I did that day or in the past week.

I remember the other night I mentally woke myself up from a very vivid dream, I knew that I had to get out of the dream.  I was covered in sweat when I woke up and shaking like a leaf.  It involved my best friend and someone about to kill her and I woke myself up before it happened.  It scared me.  I was literally scared.  I felt completely helpless and knew I couldn't stop it.

It took quite a bit of time to stop my heart from pounding before I could calm down and drift back into a dreamless sleep.  I guess that night, I had had my fill of dreams.

Now I know someone will tell me that there is a meaning behind that dream, blah blah blah.  I'm sure there is a meaning, and it usually is the meaning we least expect.  I don't need my dreams analyzed.  I already know where that dream came from and what lead up to me dreaming such a scary thing.

I just need to find a way to squash the crazy dreams before I go to sleep.

Let's face it, I'm not gonna stop reading, it is one of my favorite past times and the only time I have to read is before I go to bed.  I could change the topics of my books but I'm not gonna do that because I like to read what I like to read.

I understand that in order to dream we have to be in REM sleep.  I guess it's a good thing I am sleeping hard, because one has to be out in order to achieve REM sleep.

I do know that I would love to reach the Stage 4 of sleep sometime this week so I can enjoy a moment of dreamless sleep.

The mind is a funny and complicated thing.

To bad I cannot remember most of my dreams, if I did maybe I could turn them into a multimillion dollar book series.  You do know that Stephenie Meyer had a dream about a sparkly vampire, that turned into the Twilight Saga.

So what do you do to squash a dream filled sleep?