bats in the house

25Aug09

I have been sleeping on the floor the last few nights and I wake up somehow an equal mix of refreshed and exhausted.  Yes, it’s odd, but true.

I haven’t been sleeping very well for the last few weeks.  I find it incredibly odd that I slept like a baby for some nights over the summer when everything was up in the air.  Now that I know where I live, I have a job and a car and (hopefully soon) a paycheck, I am suddenly not sleeping?  Go figure.

When I don’t sleep well I have incredibly weird but vivid dreams.  When I wake up I have to think, sometimes for several minutes, about whether or not what happened in the dream is real, or if my life is real.  (Maybe I shouldn’t admit that…watch some random internet stranger pull out a DSMIV, track down my IP address, and soon six guys in white coats show up at my work to take me away…yikes.)

This morning, as I was adjusting to reality, I made an interesting observation.  Over the last several months I have had recurring dreams about my aunt.  When I was an adolescent we were pretty close and I would practically count the days until I got to be with her again.  She died nearly two years ago after a long illness related to addiction.  In my dreams, however, she is alive and well, and when I try to express that I am in awe of the fact that she is living, she tries to tell me that she was alive all along and can’t figure out why all these people think she has died.

I think most people would find dreams about dead people relatively disturbing, others comforting.  This morning as I was traveling between dream and reality I found myself wondering if my aunt, due to various life circumstances and hangups, did not completely fulfill some part of her destiny.

Also, when considering the repeated pattern of these dreams, I wondered for the first time if these cosmic reminders of her memory might cause me to ask myself the same question.

Filed under: probably shouldn't have said that, what i did last night   |  Leave a Comment