These are the nights I hate.

The cries sometimes erupt sharply from her room. Other times they are soft at first, growing to a fever pitch. Heaving sobs come between high-pitched whines. I wonder at first if she’s scared or in pain or both as I rush up to her room.

Tonight it’s sharp cries. I find Cordy on the floor beside her bed, curled in the fetal position with her arm over her head, trying to block out some unseen attack. I ask her what’s wrong, but as usual I get answers that are vague or make no sense.

I ask why she’s upset and she says she doesn’t know. I ask if her belly hurts, and she says it does. I ask if her foot hurts and she says it does. I doubt she really hurts – instead she is letting my questions lead her to find the answer she doesn’t know. Anything I ask she answers yes.

Her eyes are open wide, pupils large and black. She is awake yet most of the time sees right through me. She begins to cry out that she misses her grandma, and I remind her that she’ll see grandma in a few days. She then says she misses mommy, and I look closer into her eyes and tell her I’m right there. I shift my weight slightly and she interprets this as a sign of retreat, begging me to stay because she is scared.

“What are you scared of?” I ask.

“I don’t know…the dark.”

“But your light is on. It’s not dark in here.”

“I’m scared of the dark when I close my eyes.”

As a toddler Cordy suffered from night terrors. She would wake suddenly, screaming and thrashing as if she was being assaulted. We tried to comfort her, but any attempt to interact made her scream even louder. She didn’t recognize us or her surroundings. 15-20 minutes later, she would eventually start to calm and slowly become aware of our presence, dazed and clinging to us for comfort.

We had a long period where there were no nightmares or night terrors. Cordy has never slept through the night since she turned three, but she rarely needs us when she wakes. She usually goes to bed around 7pm (her choice), then wakes sometime between 11pm-1am, spending up to an hour quoting some TV scene to herself over and over, running back and forth in her room, or collecting carpet fuzz in one of her play kitchen pots. She eventually settles down without any intervention from us. Sometimes she has another awake period around 3am, and by 6am she is up for the day.

But over the past few weeks, the night-time crying has come back. She may be four years old, but her comprehension of nightmares is closer to that of a two year old. She can’t comprehend it – she only knows that she’s suddenly awake and scared of something she can’t describe. It’s not a night terror, because she’s awake and aware of us, but she can’t accept our explanations. No matter how we try to explain that it wasn’t real, she doesn’t believe us. Her inner world and the outside world are blurred together in that moment.

It’s very possible that these nightmares are her way of trying to process the outside world that encroaches on her internal world more each day. Her inner world is a predictable place, filled with routine and repetition and patterns. She retreats to it whenever she feels threatened. Our world is chaotic to her, frightening and confusing and filled with new experiences and sensations. When she’s had too much, she retreats inward to her scripts and her repetitive motions.

Cordy has made incredible progress combating autism. She’s brave, she’s strong-willed, and she wants to please us so much. I feel so proud of her accomplishments, and I take some pride in how well we’ve fought to get her to this point. She has her good days and bad days, of course. She talks back to us now, full of attitude that she learned from her classmates, and while it’s frustrating we laugh and remind each other it’s a sign of progress. She’s acting like a “typical” four year old with each huff and foot stomp.

But on these nights, when I cradle my scared, no-longer-small four year old with the wide, vacant eyes and grasp for ways to make her fears go away, unable to promise that the darkness won’t be there when she closes her eyes, I feel just as lost as she does. And I can only hope that the morning sun will vanquish the darkness and bring her some peace, even if only for another day.