Learning to love your shadow

When I was 21, I had a recurring nightmare. I was in a car with friends heading to a music festival. We heard on the radio that a lunatic had escaped from a local asylum. The traffic stopped on the motorway, because people were leaving their cars and running away in terror. The whole motorway was deadlocked with abandoned cars. My friends also ran away but for some reason I kept going forward. The motorway turned into a foggy country lane at night. A figure stumbled out of the fog. It was a man in an overcoat, clutching his side as if he was wounded. I realised with horror that this was the escaped lunatic, and that in his hand he was holding a gun. I turned to run away, just as the escaped lunatic raised the gun and aimed it at me. I woke up in a panic.

This nightmare repeated for several weeks, and then the scene shifted. This time, I was sitting in the passenger