If she fall asleeps with a pen in her hand, don't remove it - she might be writing in her dreams.

When my head hits the pillow, before my eyes ever fall closed, my mind begins to race. Everything I have accomplished and all the questions I've yet to answer swim forward to remind me that they're still there. My mind finally quiets and I begin to doze.

I moan and whimper in my sleep as ax-wielding maniacs chase me, tornadoes surround me and members of my family are picked off by faceless snipers. I shimmy through tiny doors like Alice, speak to golden sphinxes, and leap tall mountains in a single bound all in an effort to get away.

I feel my husband wrap his arms around me and surface long enough to hear him whisper soothingly in my ear that it's just a dream. He strokes my hair back from my face and tells me to dream the good dreams. I know that somewhere in the midst of those images, I cried out his name and he answered me, as he always does.

As he snuggles against me, the worst of the images fade away and sleep reclaims me. New images replace those that made me thrash.

I see the children cowering in the pantry as the baby wails at their feet. Aunt Hermione nods in weary acceptance as her young niece reveals her plan. Tristan holds Rhiannon ineffectively while she cries brokenly. He turns and walks away in defeat as she sobs; heartbroken lovers slighted by life.

These new images are the good dreams that he spoke of. The ones that I live in. The ones that wake me in the middle of the night and have me reaching for paper and pen. The ones that plague me until I tell their stories. I'm never asleep when they come, but I'm never awake either. I'm in the place somewhere in between... the one that only I can get too. The one he knows I must get too.

The frightening, frustrating, euphoria inducing place where hundreds of people go about their daily lives, never seen but seeing. They whisper with me, talk to me, shout at me. They live somewhere inside, having chosen me to reveal them to the world. They consume me, shutting out everything. Even him at times.

Sometimes, it works out and we part dear friends. Others, they end up as irritated as I.

"It's no good," they tell me and I delete a section of their lives and start all over.

I always start over. The first draft is the hardest, the dirtiest, the one with too many commas, too much thought, too many words. But... it's always my favorite. It has meaning, perhaps only to me... but it's still meaning.

I took that not quite awake, not quite asleep place with me... I gave it shape, shaded its boundaries, breathed life into it and made it real. I coaxed what only I see out of that in-between world so that you could see it too.

"Sweet dreams, princess," my husband whispers as he snuggles beside me, knowing as he always does that the in-between place is clamoring for my attention, demanding I leave him behind again.

That place beckons. It’s somewhere so far out there, I can’t even see it. But, it calls me anyway. It’s like a drug. I leap mountains again, wiggle through those ever tiny doors. I willingly cross the rings of hell to find that place. I hear him whisper to me, selflessly giving me his approval… and I’m back there again. The place where the good dreams wait for me to make them real.

“Welcome back,” they tell me.

I sigh in relief, happy they haven’t fled. Relieved that my drug is still there; that there was a purpose behind my moaning and thrashing, behind the terror that marked me, that briefly claimed me before spitting me out the other side.

“Welcome home." My husband's blessing sounds in unison with theirs, coming from somewhere far off... but close even so.

“Yes,” I smile, the bad dreams fading in the face of such wonder, such unquestioning acceptance. “Welcome home.”