Sunday, June 15, 2008

bed bugs

I am a well-seasoned night owl and insomniac. My internal clock has been amped to high during the late night hours since I was a kid, so being liveliest at night is natural to me. But for the past decade I have also had the cannot-fall-asleep thing happening, I usually have to exhaust my racing brain in order to get it to shut the f**k up and it's rare that I fall asleep early. I've tried the usual- hot tea, counting sheep, soothing music, yadda yadda etc- but it's almost like my subconscious has this paranoia of going to bed before a certain time in the early morning hours. Recently I realized that the hour I can't seem to fall asleep prior to, is the approximate hour that both my mother and my sister passed away. I'm sure some would love to analyze that one. Bad moons rising. When I do fall asleep, I have the most bizarre dreams... lately there has been a series of recurring ones that rotate around my twisted little head. One of those is about a place, very strange and surreal in that dreamlike way of course, neons and purples and greens and reds and smoke hugging the ground... it's always nighttime, and I'm standing outside of some kind of club or bar... it winds around like a Nautilus shell to a velvety interior with the entrance to the heart of the place deep inside. And people are drifting in and out, beautiful people in beautiful clothes, in groups of 2's, 3', and 4's, laughing, cheeks reddened, partying down... they let bits of colored light and music spill out behind them in the doorway and it looks good in there, good, nice and cozy... and I always watch, from outside looking in... but I never go inside... I never get to see what's in there. I'm not sure how to get in, am I even allowed to go in? Nobody talks to me, and I talk to no one. People part and flow around me like I'm ghostly. And I always feel like I'm dressed totally wrong, I feel like I have forgotten something really important, there is always a sense of urgent awkwardness. Is something important happening inside? Was I supposed to bring something? Was I meeting someone here? Sometimes everyone is a stranger. Sometimes not. The circumstances, the details, the individuals and the sequences are always different, but always within that same premise... sometimes I like being invisible and watching everyone ebb around me... other times it makes me feel so lonely. Strangely, even though I often wake up intermittently while I sleep, I tend to just weave in and out of the same variation of one dream as I fall in and out of sleep, which is confusing as Hell. No matter what I dream or how I sleep, though, I always wake up the exact same way.... with a uberhyperactive chihuahua in my face. Yip yip.

8 comments:

richardttu said...

I myself am a "night owl", and always have been. However, I have currently have an 8-5 m-f kind of job, so I can only work the late shift, as it were, on weekends. I also struggle with difficulty sleeping and often have weird dreams, but they are probably not that weird by my standards.

--Richard

Unknown said...

well most dreams are nothing more than recurring events that happened during the day. we think they are meaning full only because dreams rarely occur, (not knowing that your mind goes threw dreams literally every day). This is because your body acts as a self defense mechanism by deleting the information. ever waken up too fast from a dream that you suddenly forget you had the dream so in order to remember you had to lay back down and try and remember!? our dreaming sequences come from a gland in the frontal lobe called the Pineal gland that excretes very small amounts of high concentrated hallucinogenic formula better known as DMT. This may very well be the cause of frequent Deja'vu. To most people dreams can be as useless to them the was keith richards is to a vampire! and unless your like me in which case yes ( a creature of the night) then your mind body and spirit evolve and separate from the "norm" and material ideas. thus creating a new subconcious level of thinking which also in this case includes dreaming! and the dreams suddenly become almost prophetic in the sense that your mind can tell you a head of time what will occur in the events to come! these dreams usually happen in third person. and well the whole insomnia thing.. usually i have a bad case of that when theres just tooooo much on my mind and i cant literally stop thinking about it! i dont know any other way to cure it than to have a stroll in the park.. sort of a midnight walk!? anyway i hoped this helped you out! love peace!
xoxo jesus!

Chasemice said...

That sounds like an anxiety dream (no duh)... whatever your source of anxiety is, its being played out in a "social anxiety" scenario.

It is weird how the mind plays out out daytime feelings.

I remember that at one point in my life I was being tortured by my ex-husband. (His twisted ways were the reason I divorced him.) I remember constantly being angry and dreading his phone calls.

Well, in my dream, I would have this ugly little brown creature knawing at my thigh -- it was so eerie and disgusting. Of course that little creature represented my ex and the gnawing was the anguish I felt. (I am grateful to say that that crap is over now.)

I remember another dream where I would lay down in a coffin, and I was totally upset that nobody was coming to my funeral. I guess in my life, I felt alone and that nobody was there for me.

Anyways, you appear to be the type of person who is in their own world. Even though you may be laughing and enjoying yourself with friends, deep down inside you are elsewhere....

ans your anxiety about not sleeping, maybe its transferring over to your dream worls. Or maybe you have other sources of anxiety in your life.

You've been through a lot ... losing people you love .... give it time, as they say. Sounds like I am minimizing it all, and please forgive me if it does sound like that...

take care :)

chasemice

Linda "Speedy" Monroe said...

I definitely see quite a few things going on. First is dealing with seperation from losing your loved ones. You can not sleep before the hour that your mother and sister passed away, but once you do fall asleep you are detached from what is going on by being an observer to life going on.
Having gone through so much loss can leave someone feeling like they are on the outside looking in while they are in mourning. I sometimes feel alone in a crowded room full of friends. Not that I don't love them, but as I go through the things I am going through, at times I don't feel fully ready to join them emotionally so I feel detached. The one thing I love about our dreams is they tell us what we try to keep under control in the light of day. Our minds are like that blatant person everyone knows who says exactly what's on his mind. :)

Anonymous said...

I don't know what to say, really, except that you're having classic anxiety dreams. At least they're visually interesting.

I'm totally bored with my life right now, largely due to my marginal employment. Thusly, I constantly dream that I'm at work, doing my boring job, getting nowhere. :{ Just like my real life. :(

I have recurring dreams that I'm in an abandoned house that's filled with everything I might want... I can't take any of it, but it's all right there.

My solution to insomnia in the past was to make art until I passed out. Art, classic B&W movies and a white noise machine. Perhaps due to this, I still want to sleep in front of the TV- bad habit, but hey, I've had worse.

Anonymous said...

Nothing much to add to the analyses already posted here; this is much like a dream-version of what you described in an earlier blog as always being on the alert, outside the crowd, not feeling like you (could) fit in.

It's a tease, come spiralling inward to the heart of the matter and have fun with us.

Anonymous said...

There's a different approach to this too, lucid dreaming or conscious dreaming. (Look for information on the web, there's plenty, also free e-books).

This is a state of mind where you are fully aware that you are dreaming while it happens. You can train yourself to interact with your dreamcharacters, ask them questions, give them gifts, have them give you gifts. Native Indian tribes (used to) do it. Some claim it helps integrate parts of your own soul. It borders on out-of-body experiences.

I've fooled around with it some 15 years ago, kept a dream journal, but didn't really get to a phase where I actually managed to control anything in the plot playing in my mind.

Later on I was warned that lucid dreaming could get me in touch with the spiritual world and could release things I would not be able to control. So I quit then but I would still like to try it.

I day-dream up friends that help me think things over or speak up in awkward situations ~ lucid dreaming can't be much "worse" and may really integrate aspects of myself.

Sebastian said...

“I feel like I have forgotten something really important, there is always a sense of urgent awkwardness. Is something important happening inside? Was I supposed to bring something?” Yeah, yourself. I think you want to do something different and meet new types of people. But it’s just not happening right now.
You lived in New York? Lot of different types of people right? Here in ol’EP, not so much. And I include myself in this. Maybe go visit Joe in Chicago for a little bit. He likes you get in touch. A little time away sounds like what you need.