So, we're breaking from bucket list updating (which does need another post) because I had a jacked up dream last night that's just sticking with me today.
For anybody who's known me for an extended period, you know that I'm at a constant Cold War with my sleep... and now all the rest of you know too, I guess...
ANYWAY! I've had chronic insomnia since, like, the womb. You can still get my mom fired up about my shitty sleeping habits when I was a baby- "We would've killed, KILLED for 5 hours of sleep! We heard other parents talk about their baby sleeping for only 8 hours and thought, 'Oh, must be nice...'" Unfortunately, you're missing my mom's facial expressions which I can vividly see in my head but they very closely resemble some combination of the Grinch looking down at Whooville and PETA member in a steakhouse.
I don't have many memories before the age of 6, but most of the ones I do have are of playing with my stuffed animals, cleaning, and/or singing/talking to myself into the night. Hey, don't judge me, I'm an only child- got to find some way to keep yourself entertained and when you're awake 20 hours of the day, you run out of options. I just don't remember sleeping... ever... Although I'm sure I did because I also remember constant nightmares. I didn't have a nightmare-less night until I was 13 or 14. It got to the point where "nightmares" became a fluid term- there are the nightmares that disturb me so badly that I never go back to sleep or there are the nightmares where I wake up scared shitless and/or crying but I can self-soothe and go back to sleep.
On the plus side, I've gained a ridiculous amount of control over my dreams. When I see a dream turning for the worst, I can wake myself up and then go back to sleep or pretty much say, "Fuck this" and start flying around the dream. I've heard all my life how TV kills imagination and I've always thought, "I. wish." because my unconscious will take a concept from a TV show or movie and blow it into extreme proportions rendering sleep useless.
Some 4 or 5 years ago, I no longer had such an issue. Dreams were exaggerations of real life sprinkled with the occasional disturbing dream. Every now and then, a dream will stick with me throughout the day for some reason (usually I can process it and move on), like last night.
Last night I dreamed that I walked into my internship on Wednesday and everything had been changed, there were new therapist which cause me (as an intern on her way out) to be ousted from my assigned office and out every office, forcing me to conduct therapy in the conference room. To add insult to injury, in the mix-up of the new office, my client got scheduled an hour before I entered the office and had been waiting for 40 minutes when I arrived. The rest of the dream was me yelling at people to get out of the conference room because I was trying to conduct therapy. I even surprised myself in my dream by my voice raising several octaves while screaming, "WHAT?!" when the 70th or so person tried to enter the room. I finally escorted the client out since I was clearly in no stance to provide therapy and when I walked to the front, I found that everyone whom I had been screaming at were accusing me of not being LGBTQ sensitive (like that has anything to do with anything) and I explained to the CEO how I was unable to do anything where I was.
Except the CEO didn't look like our agency's CEO, she looked and sounded like the Horse Master from the summer camp I used to go to, whom I haven't thought about for years but I love her so that made the dream very enjoyable for a hot second.
Everything in the dream has actually happened to me at my internship (well, except being accused of not being LGBTQ sensitive- don't know where that shit came from). I also have never had to end therapy because I was in a bad state. But I have been forced to use the conference room and then had 6 people walk in on three of my sessions (which is why there is a bright orange sign saying "Check schedule and knock first before entering" on the conference room door that just HAPPENS to be in my scrawl); I have recently been ousted from the office I was in; I have had a client scheduled before I started work; and I have walked into the office with everything changed multiple times.
But my brain took this, exaggerated it, and threw in an ongoing theme in my dreams- struggling to keep people out of my space. I woke up really annoyed but my real beef is that my unconscious will not let me take a break. I get it, I feel I have no space that's genuinely my own, particularly with my apartment looking like unholy hell and the toilet constantly running (making me constantly fuming). It's something I sit here and think about all day in one way or another so, shit, let it go for these brief 7 hours when I'm trying to sleep. Think about Reno 911! since I just watched a 4 hour marathon. Think about being a criminal profiler for the FBI (hells yes, Criminal Minds). Think about puppies and rainbows for all I care, just let go of the shenanigans I waste my day thinking about for 7 freaking hours... geesh.
And then, of course, I wake up and write a blog post about how infuriating that shit is... if that's not ironic, I don't know what is.
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