Can't Sleep

Can’t sleep tonight. I started to type “Not exactly sure why” but that’s bullshit, I know why. Last night I had nightmare after nightmare and it was quite apparent to me that I was under psychic attack from someone. It may not have been intentional, but negative thoughts were being sent my way like fiery pokers and it ripped into the deepest parts of my psyche.

The first nightmare caused me to lunge across the bed with my arms out screaming, “I’m going to...!” My heart was racing and I was scared, so terribly scared. I slowly laid back down and wondered if I should just get up, go downstairs, sit on the deck and smoke, shake it off, or should I try and go back to sleep and cross my fingers that it wouldn’t happen again. I decided to lay back down, sort through the dream, it’s meaning, and by the time I had done so I was completely asleep.

In the dream I was in the bedroom I spent most of my youth. I’d just finished doing some unknown (unimportant) home improvement work and the vacuum cleaner was full of dry wall dust particles. Also in the room was my old room mate, the mother of my daughter who I spent seven years raising, who I spent nearly $60k on (between them both), who I promised to adopt and who she’s promised to allow me to adopt, who I had been “dad” to in every way, shape, and form for nearly a decade. The mother, we’ll call her Angela, recognized that I felt a sense of accomplishment and joy over a job well done so she congratulated me with empty sincerity as she took the end of the vacuum hose and began to spray the dry wall dust all over the room. In a moment of shock I realized that she had spent years intentionally analyzing my core values, hopes, and dreams, and had intentionally been congratulating my happiness out of one side of her mouth while actively and consciously doing things to undermine me out of envy, out of anger, out of hatred, and as it hit me I found myself doing something I would never do in real life but frightened me to the core: I grabbed her by the throat, threw her hard into the closet, and screamed, “I’m going to...!”

I don’t think she was the one instigating the dream. Everyone has a certain psychic signature that intuitives learn to pick out (with some practice [and hopefully guidance]) and she wasn’t there except symbolically. What triggered the dream didn’t matter at that moment as much as the reality that I realized that I’d literally spent that long living with someone who was literally undermining me at every point and that she'd reached so far into my psyche she'd literally gotten into the safest place of my childhood. She is, I firmly believe, the initial cause of my Fibromyalgia.

I don’t recall the other dream. I did have dreams where there were gang members trying to get me, dreams with guns, one dream at the Playboy mansion of all random places, where I recall seeing hunks of men and thinking to myself how everyone must think they’re just all that but if someone could see who I really am they’d want me in a second because who I am on the inside is a thousand times more potent than what they were on the outside (not to mention that looks fade, character does not). Anyway, I just recall having at least one more nightmare though it wasn’t as nearly upsetting as the first.

So one reason I can’t sleep is the fear that I’ll wake up to another dream like the first one. I’d rather stay up all night staring at the ceiling, to be quite honest. Another reason: I’m feeling especially lonely lately. I go through phases but it can be hard having only one friend and there are some other factors in my life this years that have ripped open a few dozen old scars in my heart and created a few new ones in my soul. And then for whatever reason my body is simply wired.

I’m sure to get a few hours of sleep at some point and I am packed, more or less ready to head to Astoria tomorrow with Sophie. She’ll be going to a concert and I, having lost all enjoyment of music, will be walking the hills and taking a few hundred photos (weather permitting). Maybe if I’m lucky that little restaurant I love so much will be open and I can get the best mushroom sandwich I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. Until then I sit, I write, I read, I listen to Coast to Coast AM, I pet the kitties, and I wonder as I wander.

So I'm finishing this on the deck as I smoke. Tomorrow another attempt to quit. It's so hard when part of you simply is done. And it is hard knowing when you are happy and your needs are met, as they were for a short time earlier this year, I could just stop and be happy as a clam without them. Fuck. Just fuck.