Stalking the Enemy

It is funny, to me, anyway, that I am blogging about sleep rather than actually trying to sleep.  As I have documented in the past, I have a very rocky history with Lord Morpheus.  In fact, I have written a novel about it, including many of my more outre dreams in the three-hundred page epic.  Once I am satisfied with the ending, I am going to approach Vertigo to see if I can publish my novel somehow, maybe as a graphic novel.  Yes, I used Morpheus (Dream) and his six brothers and sisters as main characters in my novel.  Not a good idea in retrospect, perhaps, but it was needed at the time.  If you have no idea what the hell I was just saying, go to Google and look up Neil Gaiman and Sandman.  Then, you shall know everything.

I have the shittiest sleep cycle possible.  If left to my own devices, I like to go to bed around six in the morning and get up in the early afternoon.  However, that is not very conducive to living a normal life, so I slowly started edging my bedtime earlier.  By the time I left for London about two years ago, I was going to bed at one in the morning.  Then, London fucked even more with my cycle, and I started going to bed at nine at night.  Let me tell you, that was the weirdest thing in the world.  I would get up at four or five in the morning, which was earlier than I used to go to bed.

Then, the bedtime started creeping back again, until it was around one or two in the morning.  Ideally, I was aiming for midnight, but it didn’t happen.  Now, however, over the last few days, I’ve started going to bed at six in the morning again, and I have no idea why.  I think it might be related to my changing other aspects of my life, but I’m just spitting in the wind here.

In addition, the disturbing dreams are returning.  Last night, I dreamt that a friend from high school revealed to me that she had cancer.  She then told me that she had one month to live, and it made me feel incredibly sad.  She was only twenty-seven!  (My age in real life), and it seemed so unfair that she would be dying.  We were in our high school cafeteria as she told me, and I could feel the sadness as I stared at my sandwich.  I told her that I thought it was horrible and a crock of shit, and that I felt so saddened by the news.  She told me not to be sad, but to just accept it.  I couldn’t though.  I had no idea how she could accept the news with such serenity.  I know I would be freaking the fuck out!

Ok.  This friend and I were constantly mixed up by other people from elementary school throughout high school.  She is Korean American, and I am Taiwanese American.  That’s it.  No resemblance.  Still, I suppose she could represent the younger me in my dream, if you believe Jung.

By the way, Dream, if you’re listening, I DO NOT want to start dreaming of my friends dying or being dead.  I’ve had quite my fill of that, thank you very much.  As if Morpheus would ever listen to me.

As troubling as that dream was, however, the one the night before was just bizarre.  I was in a van traveling somewhere.  I suddenly call out to the driver, “Stop the van! I have to get off!”  I see my friend from college, the one who got me into taiji the first time around.    Except, in my dream, he looks like Robert, the creepy taiji teacher.  Still, it’s my friend, and I hug him eagerly.  Fade to black.

Next scene, we are at some sort of camp.  It’s daytime, and we’re in a field.  There is a bright sun overhead.  My friend and I decide to snuggle and talk.  Only, we decide to get naked.  I am a bit self-conscious about being naked, but I quickly decide to get over it.  It’s my friend, and no one is watching!

A quick interjection:  I had a massive crush on this friend when we were both doing a semester in Asia in college.  Then, as we got closer and he got more into taiji, I began to see him as an aesthete, and I no longer was crushed out on him.  In addition, on BJ, a woman kept bringing up the concept of bundling, which is probably what gave birth to this dream.  Ok.  Back to the dream.

So, we get naked and cuddle.  We are chatting away, and I feel quite comfortable other than thinking about how fat my ass is.  There’s a close-up of my ass, just so I can see the magnitude of the fatness.  (Hey, at least I have an ass in my dream, unlike in real life).  Fade to black.

Next scene.  We are still naked, but no longer cuddling and chatting.   We decide to do both, so I lay down on the ground on my stomach so I can cover as much of my naughty bits as possible.  Next thing I know, my friend has dropped down on top of me, also stomach down.  In other words, he tea-bagged my ass.  In fact, in my dream, I remember thinking, “Ew, he just slammed his scrotum against my butt!”  Then I thought, “That must hurt.”  So I asked him if it hurt.  He said he didn’t know what I was talking about as he stayed on top of me.  End of dream.

Any thoughts on that dream?

So, what have I learned from my nocturnal adventures?  One, I am definitely a night person.  In terms of a job, it’s probably best if I get a second-shift or overnight shift job so I don’t have to deal with mornings.  Or, better yet, a job that I can do from home–one where it doesn’t matter what time I do my work as long as I get it done in a set amount of time.

Two, I really need to do the sleep study.  I hear that you can take home the mask and monitor yourself at home, which would be a much better deal for me.  I mean, really.  There’s nothing like trying to sleep in a foreign place with electric things hooked up to your body and people watching you.  In addition, I sleep in the nude, which I am fairly certain wouldn’t be allowed.

The other thing I’m realizing is that I have to force myself to have a schedule, regardless of if I’m tired or not.  It’s like eating.  I can’t tell if I’m hungry or not unless I haven’t eaten in over twelve hours, so I just eat when I think it is a timely thing to do.

I have got to find a way to get decent sleep.  I am not asking to be refreshed upon waking, but I would like to feel at least a slight bit more rested than I did before sleeping.  I definitely hate waking up more tired than I was the night before.  I have hated sleep for too long.  It’s time to try to figure out a way to work with my quirks and oddities rather than against them–it’s the story of my life.