There’s something paradoxically beautiful about nightmares, something that transcends their horror and unease, something raw and brutally honest. While most people seek refuge in dreams of peace, comfort, or fantasy, I find myself drawn more deeply into the shadows, into the places where the mind doesn't lie. Nightmares are not simply bad dreams; they are confrontations with truth in its most unfiltered form.

Regular dreams are soft, they blur the edges of reality, give us what we want, or distract us with fleeting illusions. They tell us sweet stories where the world bends in our favor, where the fears we carry are either absent or conveniently veiled. But nightmares... they do not lie to us. They reveal the parts of ourselves that polite dreams dare not touch. In their violent honesty, in their surreal but sharp precision, nightmares tear down the facades we construct in the waking world. They point, unflinching, at our deepest wounds, our greatest fears, our forgotten traumas.

I admire nightmares because they challenge me. They force me to look inward. They reflect the chaos I carry, the anxiety I bury, the stress I pretend doesn't exist. They don’t ask for permission. They enter like intruders, but leave like teachers. They shape me, sharpen my awareness of who I am and what I’m still running from. In the chilling breath behind me, in the twisted reflections of familiar places, in the grotesque imagery that should disturb but instead mesmerizes I find clarity.

And perhaps it’s because nightmares don’t offer escape that I respect them more. They demand confrontation. They whisper truths in screams. Where other dreams let me drift, nightmares demand I navigate. Where others give peace, nightmares give depth.

In the end, I don’t fear nightmares, I revere them. For in their haunting tapestry, I find the most vivid expressions of my mind’s hidden architecture. And I’d rather walk through a hell that is real than float in a heaven that isn’t. - Rikkas