As a small child, I often dreamed that I was driving, alone, down an extremely narrow mountain road in an old, dark blue (nearly black), round-fendered car with tan interior, and I was anxious.
I often had nightmares, as a child, but I taught myself to enjoy them, rather than panicking. I would feel myself trying to wake and would talk myself into staying asleep, so I could see how the dream developed. I then looked forward to them.
I quit having nightmares when we moved from California when I was 8–½. I no longer had a need for the entertainment of nightmares, because life, itself, was nightmare enough and not at all enjoyed.
An adult nightmare, very detailed, was that I was at the church camp I attended very summer then, and to enter it, I went down the rabbit hole (as in Alice in Wonderland). Rather than falling down the rabbit hole, I walked briskly (propelled to do so by the steep terrain) down the bumpy path, between tall, dense redwood trees.
On my back, I carried an extremely emaciated, crippled child, who was me as a little girl. I called her by the name I was given when I was born (which I had, by then, legally changed). She held on to me so tightly that her bony arms and fingers were hurting me.
On the way, we passed groups of people who stood tightly together, whispering (some behind hands covering their mouths), watching us pass. All of them disapproved of me.
I got to the bottom of the hole and saw there a obelisk that looked like a 6-foot-tall Washington Monument. The child screamed and tore at me, but I pried her off my back and, with purpose, plopped her down in front of the monument. She screamed louder and begged me not to leave her there, to take her with me. She tried to get the gossiping groups to stop me, so they also began yelling at me, demanding that I take her. I said nothing but walked briskly past them, up past the trees, and out of the rabbit hole, into bright sunshine.