I hold my breath

I found out, only within the past decade, that I shared a rather odd trait with my mother: I hold my breath when I am stressed. Given how much stress I've experienced the past several years, I seem to spend much of my life suffering from oxygen deprivation.

When I'm emotionally tense — which is most of the time — my muscles are tense. All of them. It's probably the only reason I have any muscle tone at all. If I'm going to die of asphyxiation, at least my core muscles have enough structure to keep me upright until rigor mortis sets in.

I don't notice when I stop breathing; I notice when I start breathing again, or when I need to start breathing again. This goes on all day, off and on. I have no idea if it happens at night, but I wouldn't be surprised. 

When I was little, I had nightmares fairly often. Sometimes they were about monsters, but one repeated for years. Each time, I would wake up, my heart beating so hard and fast I thought I could see it against my chest. My room was dark and my covers were over my head. I was absolutely convinced that a huge black dog was sitting next to my bed, waiting for some movement, some sound, that showed I was awake. Once that happened, I knew it would pounce on me aand rip my throat out. So I would breathe as shallowly as I could and I would hold myself absolutely still. I probably didn't fall back asleep so much as pass out.

When I grew older, the big black dog changed into home invaders, but the concept was the same: any indication I was awake would result in a horrible death.

By the time I was in my mid- to late-30s those nightmares were infrequent, and I rarely have them now. But the feeling is the same: if I don't succeed in whatever I think I need to do, whether it's act like I'm asleep or make enough money to support myself, I will die a horrible death. I have to make the macabre observation that now it appears my nightmare occurs in the daylight.

I'll admit that dying doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore, now that Mom is gone, but that might simply be because I'm not staring into the eyes of Death at the moment. A horrible death, however, is still to be avoided.

It's easier to tell someone else to breathe. To tell myself to breathe, I first have to be aware that I am not doing so. Maybe I need a small looped recording, some sound chip I can wear in an earring or a necklace. Over and over will be a voice, a calm and relaxed voice, saying "Breathe, honey. Just breathe."

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.