The Bogeyman

Last night was Night #4 in a row that was spent in fitful, disturbed sleep fraught with nightmares. I don't know if it's stress or what, but lack of decent sleep is starting to have an adverse effect on my good looks and abundant sense of humour. (Not to mention my incredible humility.) Not cool.

Two of these nights I had dreams about my beloved roommate's reproductive system. In the first, she told me she was having an abortion, and I kicked her out of both our apartment and my life. (She has always told me she would never do that, but just to be on the safe side, I told her the next day that should she ever make that decision, to please not tell me about it.) In the second dream, she took a pregnancy test and it was positive, and she was absolutely hysterical, and I was trying to comfort her. I have told her about both dreams, and, chaste as she is, she has requested that I divert my subconcious from her ovaries, thanks. Or at least quit relaying the message and freaking her out. These may not seem like horrible nightmares, but believe me, it would be quite an impact on our living situation, not to mention her brand-new relationship with Boyfriend. It's a pretty scary thought.

The other two dreams, I think, can be blamed on the books I am reading. In the car, I am listening to "Marley and Me" on audio (look for a review coming atcha soon.) I have wanted to read that since I first heard about it. Of course, with it being so popular, and since I work in a book store, I've already heard enough to know that the book ends on a... well, bittersweet note. [Actually, I am picking this post back up after my lunch break and just finished the book... oh my gosh... I can't tell you the last time I cried that hard!] Sunday night, I had several nightmares about my little Guster Buster dying terrible deaths. Over and over. If you know me at all, you know that I think the sun rises and sets on that goofy little dog, so obviously that was not pleasant.

Last night was the strangest of them all. I am also reading Stephen King's "The Shining." I can only blame that for the dream's oddness and surreality (but really, what dreams aren't surreal? This one, however, was off the charts.) I don't remember any of the specifics at all, only that it involved alien mind control and a bunch of sci-fi type stuff. Much more like "The Tommyknockers" than "The Shining." Also, it was one of those that even though I willed myself to wake up, the dream would pick up with slight twists and turns upon my return to sleep. Also, my alarm was incorporated into my dream so that instead of waking up at 5:45 so that I could take my car to the wash and to get my brakes fixed, I woke up finally at 7:45, giving me 30 minutes to shower, dress, blow dry, and prepare coffee and lunch (thank goodness for the automatic timer on our coffee maker!) before having to leave for work. I don't like being rushed.

I am making it my personal mission to try to figure out why my subconcious is working against me. I really don't appreciate it. It's making my face break out. :(


UPDATE: I am now certain I am certifiable. According to Wikipedia:

A number of thinkers have commented on the similarities between the phenomenology of dreams and that of psychosis. Features common to the two states include thought disorder, flattened or inappropriate affect (emotion), and hallucination. Among philosophers, Kant, for example, wrote that ‘the lunatic is a wakeful dreamer’.[26] Schopenhauer said: ‘A dream is a short-lasting psychosis, and a psychosis is a long-lasting dream.’[27]In the field of psychoanalysis, Freud wrote: ‘A dream then, is a psychosis’,[28]and Jung: ‘Let the dreamer walk about and act like one awakened and we have the clinical picture of dementia praecox.’[29]

McCreery[30][31] has sought to explain these similarities by reference to the fact, documented by Oswald,[32] that sleep can supervene as a reaction to extreme stress and hyper-arousal. McCreery adduces evidence that psychotics are people with a tendency to hyper-arousal, and suggests that this renders them prone to what Oswald calls ‘microsleeps’ during waking life. He points in particular to the paradoxical finding of Stevens and Darbyshire[33] that patients suffering from catatonia can be roused from their seeming stupor by the administration of sedatives rather than stimulants.