I'm feeling a little ootsy today, which, of course, has me thinking I should blog. Writing helps, right? Right?
I went to a rehearsal/audition/workshop thingy last night (I'm honestly not sure what it was as we were working on a play (kind of) in which I have yet to be cast (officially, if I ever will be cast, I don't know) but we read scenes and danced and brainstormed and whatnot) in a neighborhood I don't think I've ever visited before. I go to this particular suburb fairly often because it's right next door to the city and it has a really good movie theater, but when I'm going to the theater, I drive north until I don't need to anymore and then I turn right. To get to the rehearsal/audition/workshop thingy, I turned left. Which, for all of you Whovians out there might bring up ominous feeling and let me say, rightly so. Rightly so. I turned left. And within a block or so, I started to feel very out of place. I don't know that I can describe this feeling to people who don't live in major metropolitan areas, but after living in a city for a while, you start to get an instinctive feel for what neighborhoods you're comfortable walking around in at night by yourself and which ones you are not. I started to get the feeling that this was one I should not be walking around in at night by myself. Which was inconvenient as it was night and I was by myself. There is a high school there, which should indicate some level of safety, but I also know that hooligans like to hang out near their school and wreak havoc from time to time. Maybe because they don't like school in general, or maybe because they all know where it is and how to get there. And since there was really lovely weather last night, there were plenty of people out and about. Or, just out. There was a mob of twenty or so kids hanging out in front of the building where my rehearsal/audition/workshop thingy was taking place, just sort of hanging out. Until one of them yelled, "Now!" and they swarmed into the intersection like migratory birds or something and jumped up on the cars parked along either side of the street.
Now, I don't like to be one to believe stereotypes. I like to believe that people are generally good and if you don't bug them, they won't bug you. Like bees. But I also know that "mob mentality" is a real thing, so these kids running into the street (against the light, mind you) and jumping on parked cars made me nervous. Scratch that. It scared me. I was afraid to leave my car and walk into the building. I thought about asking them to please just not jump on MY car, but realized that would involve talking to them which may appear confrontational and it may just be an invitation for them to really vandalize my car. Like when someone asks you to stop calling them "Buddy," so you do nothing but call them "Buddy" for the next three years because you know it annoys them.
On the up side, they didn't do anything to my car. Nor did they even really notice me as I walked into the building. So that's good. But it left sort of a weird flavor in my mouth all night and sort of tainted my first impression of the really cool place where the rehearsal/audition/workshop thingy took place. I'm going back there during the day on Sunday for another rehearsal/audition/workshop thingy, and hopefully that will help cleanse the palate.
But I think the experience carried over into my dreams. I dreamed I was suddenly put in charge of a small child - a boy maybe five years old? He looked like the young version of Jimmy from Raising Hope - whose mother (the only existing parent) was going off to war. And this kid did not like that arrangement AT ALL. He was crying and whining and squirming and complaining. He wanted to call her on the aircraft carrier she was on headed over to the Middle East and I was trying to explain that this wasn't a good time to call mommy because she was doing military type stuff and time changes and do they even have phones on aircraft carriers for personal calls and then suddenly, my honorary sister was there saying it was totally possible to call this kid's mom because she was in transit and probably not all that busy at the moment anyway, which was very not helpful. The kid even made a break for it, like he was going to run away and find his mom and I felt so helpless and ineffective and alone in the whole thing. I woke up feeling miserable, and kind of annoyed with my honorary sister for not backing me up.
I'm getting tired of these dreams of helplessness and loneliness. I'm sure they have to do with things going on in my life that I don't want to talk about here, and are probably a reflection of the fact that I have no control over those things and it drives me crazy that I just have to let them play out, you know? But I'm ready for them to play out so I can stop having upsetting dreams. Upsetting dreams do not leave a person feeling rested and ready to face the new day.
But we have nice weather at the moment (record high temperatures), which means I get to walk outside on my lunch break from work. Which is nice. If I get a little nice during the day, it helps offset the not-so-nice at night.
I could still use a decent night's sleep, though.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Dreams
I've been tired a lot lately, and as such, I've been sleeping a lot. I'm not sure if that's helping, though, because I've been having some really odd, rather disturbing dreams of late.
Last night, I had a dream that I was going to my own engagement party. It took place at a church (which was strange enough to begin with), and when we walked in, the walls were covered with white pieces of paper that had names on them. I think they were supposed to be roses or some sort of decoration for the party, because there was a basket of them on one of the side tables and a sign that said, "Name and Relationship." My guess is that people were supposed to write their name on the rose and how they knew the bride or groom and put them on the wall, maybe so we could see how supported and loved we were? Thing is, I didn't recognize any of the names. I had arrived at the party with my mother, and watched her very determinedly fill out a rose and stick it on the wall in an act of "even if we don't know these other people, I love my daughter" and I love her for that. She's that kind of mom. But my fiance was suspiciously absent from the party, as well. Even in photographs. There were pictures of him and pictures of me, but only one of the two of us together and for the life of me, I can't place his face. In my dream, I remember saying, "I guess maybe we should start taking some pictures together." And I knew that I wasn't terribly excited about this marriage. Whoever this guy was (I remember his name was James and I think he was a friend of my brother's?), I wasn't marrying him because we were head over heels in love but because he asked and who else was I going to marry? So that dream left me feeling rather sad. My own engagement party was a) not really about me and b) not cause for much celebration.
So I woke up, scritched my cat behind the ears for a few minutes and went back to sleep.
I had another dream, this time that I was in the emergency room of a hospital giving blood. I gave two pints from my left arm and they wanted to get another one from my right, and then they had to collect some bone marrow or something from my right wrist joint. After they got the third pint of blood but before the wrist joint thing, I saw some other friends of mine in the emergency room who were there for other various procedures and I chatted with them for a bit. I felt safe when I hugged them and terrified of going back to my "bed" for the wrist joint thing. Because I knew that in order for them to get whatever it was they needed, they would have to insert a very long, very large needle through the heel of my hand to the bones in my wrist. I didn't want my friends to let me go, or I wanted one of them to go with me, but they had their own procedures to have done. So I went back to my bed when I had no more excuses not to, and they had adjusted it so that my feet would be higher than my head, presumably to facilitate getting the right angle from my palm through to my wrist, but they adjusted it too far and I slid right off, head first, onto the floor. We all laughed about that for a minute and I climbed back onto the bed (I stayed on this time) and hoped against hope that it wouldn't hurt as bad as I thought it was going to. But it did. In my dream, I could feel the pain of the needle piercing my palm and penetrating through to my wrist. I wanted someone's hand to hold and squeeze, but none of my friends were there. And the really strange part is not so much that I felt this horrid pain in my dream, but that I was aware that while I was dreaming about this pain in my hand, I consciously knew I was lying in my own bed at home with my hand resting on my stomach. I could feel that position in real life at the same time. It was odd. And painful. And when I woke up for good this time, I checked my hand first thing to see if there was a mark on it. Which, of course, there wasn't.
So the common threads in these dreams were feelings of solitude, sadness, and nonchalance. Add these to the dream I had a couple of nights ago about single-handedly fighting blue zombies with machetes (and eventually losing when a child zombie bit my thigh) and I'd say I'm about due for a really happy dream. A dream wherein I feel loved and safe and secure and happy. Or, there is something going on in my life that is making me feel very isolated that I need to examine. These sorts of dreams certainly don't make sleeping very restful.
Last night, I had a dream that I was going to my own engagement party. It took place at a church (which was strange enough to begin with), and when we walked in, the walls were covered with white pieces of paper that had names on them. I think they were supposed to be roses or some sort of decoration for the party, because there was a basket of them on one of the side tables and a sign that said, "Name and Relationship." My guess is that people were supposed to write their name on the rose and how they knew the bride or groom and put them on the wall, maybe so we could see how supported and loved we were? Thing is, I didn't recognize any of the names. I had arrived at the party with my mother, and watched her very determinedly fill out a rose and stick it on the wall in an act of "even if we don't know these other people, I love my daughter" and I love her for that. She's that kind of mom. But my fiance was suspiciously absent from the party, as well. Even in photographs. There were pictures of him and pictures of me, but only one of the two of us together and for the life of me, I can't place his face. In my dream, I remember saying, "I guess maybe we should start taking some pictures together." And I knew that I wasn't terribly excited about this marriage. Whoever this guy was (I remember his name was James and I think he was a friend of my brother's?), I wasn't marrying him because we were head over heels in love but because he asked and who else was I going to marry? So that dream left me feeling rather sad. My own engagement party was a) not really about me and b) not cause for much celebration.
So I woke up, scritched my cat behind the ears for a few minutes and went back to sleep.
I had another dream, this time that I was in the emergency room of a hospital giving blood. I gave two pints from my left arm and they wanted to get another one from my right, and then they had to collect some bone marrow or something from my right wrist joint. After they got the third pint of blood but before the wrist joint thing, I saw some other friends of mine in the emergency room who were there for other various procedures and I chatted with them for a bit. I felt safe when I hugged them and terrified of going back to my "bed" for the wrist joint thing. Because I knew that in order for them to get whatever it was they needed, they would have to insert a very long, very large needle through the heel of my hand to the bones in my wrist. I didn't want my friends to let me go, or I wanted one of them to go with me, but they had their own procedures to have done. So I went back to my bed when I had no more excuses not to, and they had adjusted it so that my feet would be higher than my head, presumably to facilitate getting the right angle from my palm through to my wrist, but they adjusted it too far and I slid right off, head first, onto the floor. We all laughed about that for a minute and I climbed back onto the bed (I stayed on this time) and hoped against hope that it wouldn't hurt as bad as I thought it was going to. But it did. In my dream, I could feel the pain of the needle piercing my palm and penetrating through to my wrist. I wanted someone's hand to hold and squeeze, but none of my friends were there. And the really strange part is not so much that I felt this horrid pain in my dream, but that I was aware that while I was dreaming about this pain in my hand, I consciously knew I was lying in my own bed at home with my hand resting on my stomach. I could feel that position in real life at the same time. It was odd. And painful. And when I woke up for good this time, I checked my hand first thing to see if there was a mark on it. Which, of course, there wasn't.
So the common threads in these dreams were feelings of solitude, sadness, and nonchalance. Add these to the dream I had a couple of nights ago about single-handedly fighting blue zombies with machetes (and eventually losing when a child zombie bit my thigh) and I'd say I'm about due for a really happy dream. A dream wherein I feel loved and safe and secure and happy. Or, there is something going on in my life that is making me feel very isolated that I need to examine. These sorts of dreams certainly don't make sleeping very restful.
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