I remember waking up in the night and being terrified that a dragon of sorts was going to come through the downstairs door and get me. This dream was recurring…

My bedroom was on the downstairs floor of our home and I was the only person who slept down there ever since my brother moved out from the room next to mine. The first time I had this dream I woke up crying and paralyzed with fear in my belief that the green dragon was going to crash through the walls at any moment. I don’t know if I screamed. I don’t remember if my parents came to me that night. I was quite small, perhaps 6 or 7.

Eventually, these images became a daydream as well. I used to take the bus to school and would get dropped off at the bottom of the hill. I would then walk up the steep hill to our driveway, which for a young girl was a long hike upward. Shortly after the green dragon appeared in my dreams this hike became rather traumatic for me. I remember sitting at the bottom of the hill one afternoon and bawling my eyes out because I thought that if I walked up the long hill that the green dragon would eat me along the way. So I sat. I sat at the bottom of the hill crying and hoping that Mom or Dad might arrive to give me a ride up the hill. Instead a lady in a station wagon stopped and asked, “Are you Katie?”. Through my tears, I shook my head no. She simply said, “Oh. Ok.” and drove away, leaving me there to work it out on my own.

I finally gathered some courage and literally ran up the hill ~ and this was a long way, even for an adult. I remember it feeling like I was running past a never-ending, skinny, scaley, green, reptilian-like neck. I got hot and a little sweaty from the weight of my backpack pounding on my shoulders. Then, when I reached the place where I imagined the dragon’s head might be, I let out a continual, ear-piercing scream until I reached our mailbox and past the big, imagined nostrils.

I remember that this dragon had enough heads to fill every driveway in Orinda. I remember standing in front of the refrigerator and thinking that I saw news helicopters reporting about the situation and police helicopters fighting the battle unsuccessfully from above.

And the next thing I remember is that my bedroom was moved upstairs next to my parents’ room until I was 14.

This has stayed with me for all of these years and I have always, always wondered what that was all about. What was frightening me so much that I turned it into a big, green dragon nightmare. Or in my case a day/nightmare…