I haven’t been sleeping well. That in and of itself isn’t news; I’ve suffered from chronic insomnia for about a decade, and, unfortunately, it’s not the kind of insomnia on which BigPharma has chosen to concentrate. Falling asleep is never a problem: it’s staying asleep, not waking up every single time I move, and I move a lot, that’s the issue. Lately, though, I have been sleeping right through no matter when I go to bed which is unfortunate since the reason I haven’t been sleeping well is that I’m having nightmares.
When I was a kid I managed to absorb the old wives tale that if you dream you die you actually do die. Somehow that got wound up with falling so I had a lot of dreams about falling when I was a kid, the kind where I’d wake up just before I hit the ground only to find that I was about to fall out of bed. Oddly, though, the one time I remember actually falling out of bed when I was a kid there was no associated dream.
Some of the nightmares I’ve been having have obvious causes – it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where the dreams about rushing water, searching for loved ones, high winds, and being attacked by water moccasins come from (note to self: stop reading hurricane coverage). Some of the nightmares, though, confound me.
Last night there were two, one that was simply disturbing, even given its content, and one that had me awake in bed, scream literally dying on my lips as I listened to my heart pound in my ears. In DC every Halloween we have an event in the gay area of town called the High Heel Race. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a bunch of drag queens in full get up racing the two blocks that run through the middle of bar district. In last night’s dream I was going to the race with some friends but my costume wasn’t quite together. I still needed the Superman shirt with the big S on it in red. During the search for said garment I some how wandered into the equivalent of a biker craft fair where the artisans were none too friendly what with me being and outsider to their community, dressed like a freakzoid superhero, and obviously queer. I suppose I should have been more disturbed by this dream seeing as how I woke up right before someone stabbed me to death.
The dream that really bugged me though was short and terrifying. I was having a perfectly ordinary meal, I think I was eating with my mother, during which I moved my jaw to chew something and all of my lower teeth fell out in a bloody clump. Just thinking about it now, more than a dozen hours later, sends a horrible little ripple of fear through me. At least I’ve stopped wanting to scream.
I have no idea what’s going on in my head, but I do know if I don’t get some sleep soon it’s not going to be pretty.
i have nightmares too i feel so childish b/c i can’t watch horror movies or anything else scary for that matter. i saw The Ring when it came out… i didn’t sleep through the night for almost a month.