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04 April, 2019

The Anxiety of Sleep

Sometimes dreams are awesome. Lady Bourbon is a hyper-vivid dreamer with all sorts of cool shit in her dreams... like Voltron. My dreams are not so cool.

It's been a long time since I've had "fun" dreams. My dreams over the last 10 years or so have all been, more or less, real life while I'm sleeping. Which, as you can imagine, sucks balls. And not in the fun "yeah baby, I like the way you do that" way. More of the "I accidentally fell on the vacuum hose and my balls are being sucked into oblivion and I think I'd rather be dead" kind of way.

Last night's dream though... Holy shit. That was a doozy.

I had a dream in which I was driving my car to the hospital. I called them on the phone to let them know I was coming and that I was having a stroke. In the mirror I could see my face slacken and go lifeless and I lost control of the car as I pulled into the hospital lot. Then I dreamed in 3rd person POV for a while and then back to being me as they tried to fix me. This involved them sticking some sort of needle-like probe into my ear and having fluid run through my brain and out the other ear.

It hurt.


And this is where I woke up freaking the fuck out.

I spent 20 minutes touching my face, trying to make sure it was working properly and doing a mental checklist of my body. It was so goddamn vivid I couldn't shake the feeling that I was going to wake up in the hospital. Not in my bed, next to Lady Bourbon with our 4YO in between us. (Side note: The 4YO is Lady Kicks-alot when she sleeps. She sleeps like a flailing madman and she seems to have nothing but knees and elbows.)

Anyway... the 4YO grabbed my index finger and held onto it and that was the only thing that allowed me to calm down. So I just laid in the bed staring at the two of them in the darkness, scared to death I was about to die or have a real stroke... and it is making for one shitty day.

All of my dreams are like this - well, not THIS exactly... but never fun. I hate dreaming. It's one of the reasons I drink before I go to bed. I get that black void of sleep that is dreamless. It might not be the best idea, I get that, but christ on a cracker - If I dreamed like this every night - I'd probably kill myself.

I have a lot of army dreams. Not always war... sometimes they're just the ridiculous tedium of the army for like 8 hours. Other times they're the war... and those suck. Then I have dreams I'm at work. I've had an 8 hour work dream (it seemed) then woke up and went to work. You want to talk about sucking - THAT sucks. 16 hours of bullshit all in one go... no thank you.

The problem is that I don't know how to STOP it. I don't know how to change the way I dream. Dreaming for me is a stressful event... And I just wish it wasn't.

So much so I've got a WIP that is about a guy who learns to control his dreams and then share dreams... but that is fiction. And this is reality.

In the meantime I'm stuck with feeling like shit in the mornings, being worried about going to sleep sober at night, and a very nervous about getting back on my meds. My meds caused me some very vivid dreams that were horrible... But, and I'm speculating here, I think that was because I kept drinking while on my meds and I wasn't supposed to. The result were horrible dreams and paranoia... Which, if you're keeping score, SUCKS....

Writing it out like this helps ease me out of the fear I'm going to die in the next few hours... so thanks for reading if you are here.

So - there's my Thursday, folks.

Hope you are all well.

-Dr. B

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