Dream a little dream

I did not accomplish all that I planned, but I accomplished much of what I wanted today. Tomorrow I must be very focused and energetic to finish it all. But I have the time, before I go to bad, exhausted and surrendering in the struggle against the mosquito bites: I've put stuff on them (Campho Phenique), I've put bandages over that. Some I haven't managed to bandage (try putting bandages on YOUR scapulas!). I'm just giving in and feeling itchy. Because some things still itch, I'm not sure if the other stuff itches less, or even not at all. You know how that happens? The sensation simply swamps your receptors and there's no way to differentiate incoming signals.

Which, unexpectedly, leads me more or less to tonight's topic: dreams and PTSD.

When I dream, my PTSD hallucinations are real. So the bug-shapes I see out of the corner of my eye in real life are large black bugs that jump at me or pursue me or go where I cannot see them in my dreams. The pet-sized shadows I see are actual dogs and cats and who knows what in my dreams. And sometimes there are people, too. As you can see, my PTSD shapes are generally not beneficial in my dreams.

Except this morning. In my dream, I was getting into my car and struggling through black webs and spiders and tree roaches and just webby kinds of barriers. When I got into the driver's seat I jumped and brought my foot up to see what was on it and it was a skinny black lizard. It wasn't scary and I wanted to catch it, or at least leave it in the car to eat the pests.

So, Julie, Dream Interpreter Extraordinaire, tell me what the heck this means?

(Does this sooth your OCD cravings for my blog posts?)

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.

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."