I rarely sleep well on Sunday nights.
I think it may be a throw-back to being a kid… you run around like an idiot all weekend and on Sunday night you didn’t want to go to sleep because you were staring down the long, dark tunnel of another school week. And I liked school.
I’ve always resisted going to bed. There’s a line in a song by Arcade Fire that sums it up for me: ‘Sleeping is giving in, no matter what the time is.’ It’s as though I’m worried I’ll miss something fun if I go to sleep. I felt that way when I was five, I feel that way now.
So I trick myself into go to bed. I know you are supposed to have a bedtime routine, but if I do that I end up throwing a tantrum and asking for glass after glass of water and yet another story so I don’t have to go to sleep (meaning that happens now, my moms wouldn’t let that happen when I was five). Instead, I very quickly turn off the lights, dump all my clothes on the floor and jump into bed before I even know what happened.
Yah, I fall for that. That I’m anywhere near intelligent is mostly a myth. I have to trick myself into going to bed by pretending I’m not going to bed until I’m in it. And it works most of the time. Freaking genius, I am.
So it was last night, but I at least had the good sense of doing my non-routine at about 10:00pm so I’d get a decent sleep. Or at least, that was the plan.
For some reason my sleep last night was plagued by horrible nightmares. And not just nightmares… it was like I was awake (I wasn’t, I was dreaming that I was awake) and thinking about these horrible things and getting progressively more upset with myself because I wasn’t sleeping. Even though I was.
But that’s not why the call for Dr. Freud to analyse my dreams last night. Most of them I don’t even remember this morning, despite being certain that I would last night. But there was one image that persisted – one that actually made me shudder this morning when I recalled it.
Not saying that dreams come true… but I do think what we dream about sometimes expose how we are feeling or what we can’t let go of subconsciously in a metaphorical or symbolic way. Like if you dream that you are being chased by Frankenstein but can’t move your legs, it may mean that you feel paralysed in your job and your boss communicates by grunting (or something like that).
So the most disturbing part of my dream last night? I had a lot (no, a LOT) of nails, needles, pins and other small, sharp things embedded in my skin all over my body. Or I assume they were all over – they were definitely in my arms, legs and face. I was pulling them out of my arms. And although it didn’t hurt to have them in there, it stung to pull them out. It was also kind of satisfying to pull them out (even though it was all stingy) – they came out easily but left small bumps where they had been.
So, that was my night. Dreams that I was awake and thinking about stuff like the above. Dreaming that I was awake and thinking these horrible thoughts and chiding myself for not being asleep. Asleep and dreaming that I was awake and reminding myself that I would be tired the next day because I wasn’t asleep.
Well, Freud? What the hell does that mean?
