In Dreams

Here I am!

I'm not really sure where I went this whole time, but now that I'm back I can report that nothing has changed.

Moving on, let's talk about my tenuous psychological well-being. My dreams are starting to make me crazy. This morning I woke up at 6 feeling fine except that I couldn't shake this really intense dream I was having and ended up laying in bed until 7:30 in a half-conscious state as this story played out in which I moved to an ocean-view house in Indianapolis (just north of the Bronx), met a tall gorgeous red-head at a bookstore who kissed me, invited me to a Halloween party, and got shorter and stockier before my eyes. I then got on the subway, missed my stop, and ended up in Arizona where I swore, inducing a woman to say "You know Deborah!" who is a coworker of mine.

Last weekend's nightmare involved getting my friend executed on child molestation charges and having to carry around his remains as a sign of my guilt only to have all my dearest friends leave me totally alone so my only companion for the rest of my days was a blood-stained box of ashes. I'm gonna go ahead and admit that I've been dealing with some stuff.

Anyway, does this happen to other people? Y'know, where you wake up and are aware of your surroundings, but your subconscious is hard at work so you can't return to reality and basically have to go back to sleep to let your dream finish itself? I was completely helpless this morning for an hour and a half as this went on, and I couldn't focus my thoughts enough to get myself out of bed.

This happens to me now and then. Not every day, but maybe one every few months.

The worst was this one experience I had in grad school. I woke up from a nap one day to go to class, and but there was this crazy thing in my head. It was this giant ball of dried, thorny vines just sort of hovering there. It was a product of my mind, probably the remnant of some weird dream, but even though I was awake, I couldn't move my body while it was there. All I could do was use my mind to untangle this ball, and I found little things hidden in it. A star. A tin soldier. A ball of yarn. It was so bizarre. As I untangled sections of it, they would disappear and it wasn't until all of them were gone that I snapped out of it and was able to move and get out of bed.

The whole experience really threw me, and every time something like this happens, I worry that there's something wrong with my brain. This morning was the longest I was ever kept under by a dream that needed to resolve itself.

I also know this isn't the result of tiredness because I slept for 8 hours uninterrupted last night, and I feel great and rested today. Anyway... is this a familiar experience to anyone? I'd really like to know I'm not the only person living in a Banana Yoshimoto novel.