I’ve been having this recurring dream the past few weeks. The situations and locations are always different except for one critical element: I know that if I fall asleep, terrible things will happen.
I spend the entire night, night after night, fighting to drag myself out of sleep, finally jerking awake, only to realize it was just a dream. But the minute I begin to fall asleep, panic sets in again; the car is going to crash, the children are going to wander off, the important person is going to walk in at any moment. Quite simply, I must wake up.
Nothing seems to help. Today, my tactic is to induce sheer exhaustion. I ran a 10k, spent three hours weeding my garden (what? you don’t have three hours of weeds in your garden?), and tried taking the antique mower for another spin. Unfortunately, the right wheel no longer rotates. I attempted to take it asunder and fix it (how complicated can that era of technology be?), but mostly just succeeded in mowing part of my thumb. It might not be complicated–and I will never know, unless I succeed in defying the mechanical law which decrees all nuts and bolts, joined before my grandparents were, shall everlastingly twain become one–but its blades are still sharp.
I will now attempt to clean my barbecue. I have never actually used my barbecue, but it seems like something one might do when one is thwarted on every other hand by the gods of yard work. You won’t allow me to trim my grass? Fine, I’ll char the fleshy parts of grass-eating kine on that most American of altars, the back yard grill.
July 22nd, 2012 at 3:05 am
Stress? Sounds very much like an exhausted and stressed brain. Try some meditation?
July 22nd, 2012 at 7:56 am
I agree with Flamingo Dancer. Sounds like your body is so physically tired that it falls asleep before your brain. Try relaxing the mind for a while before sleep. Trying drawing, breathing deeply, do nothing productive, only calming, for 30 minutes before you try to put your exhausted body to bed. Do something you love.
I hope you are able to quiet your mind and sleep tonight.
July 22nd, 2012 at 6:13 pm
See, that’s the thing. For the first time in… years, I actually have the summer off. I mean, look at me: I have time to blog again! I am reading novels and working in my yard. I am unemployed, but I feel pretty confident that it’s all going to work out fine, one way or another, as it always has in the past.. Maybe my subconscious isn’t buying it?
July 23rd, 2012 at 9:04 pm
[…] Sheer exhaustion doesn’t work out so well as a sedative. It just turns thirty-odd nightmares into one long one. Not really an improvement. […]