Who goes there?

Ah, the proverbial military security phrase, usually preceded by "Halt!" Movies and books have shown simple ways to get past guards: throwing gravel, pebbles, rocks. Making the guard jump, look, even go investigate. In a way, movies and books were telling us a bit about the PTSD a soldier can get. Hypervigilance — jumping at noises, seeing shadows.

It doesn't take declared war — or military action of whatever name politics calls it — to create PTSD. Just trauma, being placed in a situation (often repeatedly, but sometimes just once) where showing extreme vigilance was a survival mechanism. It means being hyperaware of sights, sounds, smells. And it means assuming, and mentally preparing for, the worst-case scenario.

Running in place

I haven't been so good at keeping up with the myriad details of my everyday life. I doubt this is a surprise to anyone. Bills, picking up, cleaning, phone calls, record-keeping, even getting together with friends — all of this has been difficult if not impossible for me in the past months.

I've even found it difficult to keep up with my therapy homework. Three hours ago, I started my homework for tomorrow ... and then spent two hours on the phone with one of my best friends. Talking with my friend was terrific; we haven't talked in a few weeks. But now it's after 10 pm and I should finish things up and go to bed.

.... Who the hell am I kidding? I haven't gone to bed before 2:30 in months. Often I'm up until 4 am (Hey Julie! ::waves::). Unfortunately I don't spend my time doing anything useful in any way.

My sleep schedule became completely fucked up in 2007, after my cat died. In the aftermath of the death of my companion of over a decade, I realized how much more she was to me than simply one of my most-loved companions. She was also my security system. If I woke in the night —a not-unusual occurrence — I'd automatically look to her. If she was asleep, or simply looking back at me as if wondering why I weren't asleep as I should be, I could lay my head back on my pillow and drop off easily. But if she were looking about alertly, then I had to get up and walk the house. Once I thought I saw someone in the back yard and I called the police. Several other times it was deer in the back yard; it is quite disturbing to carefully pull a curtain aside to look out ... and see a long deer face looking back at you! I was definitely the more startled.

After my furry security system died, I routinely woke in a drenching sweat from dreams of gangs of intruders hunting me down in my home. The sleeping pills my doctor gave me made the nightmares worse, so I quit them and began staying up later and later. To occupy myself during the late hours, I built a highly detailed imaginary life and I whiled away the hours between 9 pm and 3 am with this life, with listening to Vonda Shepards "Maryland,"and with watching the moon wash across my bed and the floor in the next room. It was pleasant.

Now I have no place that is washed by the moon and my heart is once more broken, even worse than before. I don't currently have anything to look forward to in the morning, or in the moment after that, or the moment after that, so I stay up, surfing the same sites over and over, and running in place in the hope that the next moment doesn't come any sooner.

Other People's Dreams

I had a therapist once, who was fairly "woo woo" (well, much more so that I was), who held the opinion that sometimes we encounter dreams that belong to someone else, as if the universal "over dream" occasionally slipped tracks. Every once in a while I have dreams that seem not to belong to me, which always reminds me of her and that conversation.

Last night I had such a dream. For some reason, I ended up near my old high school. There were other people in close proximity to me and we were looking for the street address of the school because we intended to mail something to the school. I felt as if I could almost remember it, but it was just out of reach. So I began to circle the school area, looking for street names.

All of the street signs were either obscured or they were very blurry; this happens to me sometimes in dreams, where I'll strain my dream-eyes attempting to read something that just won't come clear.

Some times I felt as if I were flying, sometimes as if I were driving a car, and always there were these presences behind me, who I conversed with but never saw, who kept up pressure on me to get this address.

Nothing about the area was familiar. Even if someone had razed the school and parking lots to the ground then rebuilt, this wouldn't have been the result. I went inside to ask someone the address.

I met an older woman (older than me, with steel gray fluffy-curly hair, sensible shoes, and all the rest of a particular stereotype). She was caring for a young boy and a puppy. She gave me the address and somehow we began a long conversation. During this time I had the puppy on my lap and had great, not always successful, battles keeping it from licking me all over the face. (I do not like dogs to lick me.) The woman commented about my not being able to even handle a puppy, to which I replied that I had never owned a dog.

Eventually, I was at my home (where I've never lived) with a car. There was another car, and out of it came a young man and woman, the little boy, and the older woman. They had a (different) puppy that for some reason I was going to foster. (IRL you couldn't pay me to foster a dog.) As we were all attempting to enter my home, I kept looking for the black cat I owned; I didn't want her to get outside while we were bringing puppy and people inside. The door would get left open, I'd look for the cat inside and out. Then it would happen again. We all ended up inside and ... not only was there a black cat, it was a small, wild, fluffy kitten. (I spent a lot of this part of the dream worrying about the cat.) Plus, there were my two dogs.

My memory of the dream ends here.

While there are many aspects of the dream that could be related to me, the whole felt alien. The feel of the dream was not what I am accustomed to feeling. The colors and the textures and my own sense of self was ... off.

AND I owned two dogs --- what's with that? I have never dreamed that I owned dogs. In my dreams, dogs are objects of fear.

All in all, it's easier for me to believe that I got someone else's dream than that I dreamed of owning dogs. But I'd definitely like to get someone else's interpretation of this thing, because I don't have one.