Wrestling Somnus

 I haven’t slept well in days. Some of it is my mind, loud and curious and stirring hornet’s nests in my breast. Even in my unconscious, my mind plagues, or haunts me. My dreams are active, intense, interesting, full of conflict, and occasionally so strange or bad that I can feel them bothering me before I even sleep.

I don’t really understand how dreams work in other people. I’ve read the generic science of sleep, with it’s cycles and REM. It is not news to me that people don’t dream all night, even when it seems like they do, and that it only happens in this one part of the cycle. The layman’s version of the science of sleep and dreaming is something I grasp. But there’s at least one severe discrepancy in my own experience.

When I am laying awake, I know more often that sleep is on its way because I start to dream before I am unconscious. My body reacts to thoughts of movement in that jerky way of anyone submitting to Morpheus’ charms. Images and stories start to play across my eyelids like the light of a camera dancing on a silver screen. The last vestiges of my conscious self recognize these partners for what they are. They welcome the beckoning rest and fade away.

Sunday night was the worst. I stayed up until 11:30 working on a handwritten letter to a friend I write to in Britain. The lateness of the hour ended up mattering very little, however. I tossed and turned and never found that comfortable position or sensation where time actually seems to pass. Rather, sleep tortured me with a sensation like that of getting a tattoo. The seemingly endless drag of the needle over skin, in which time seems to dilate, going on and on an on until finally, suddenly, it’s over. I woke up at 3. At 5. I made myself rest in bed until my alarm went off. I succumbed to my snooze, and finally hauled my tired body out of bed at 6:45. Beyond simply laying in bed resting I don’t know that I got any real rest at all.

Last night I went with one set of friends to visit another in a town 45 minutes south of here. We went to play games. We left at six so we could leave early. . . the driver and his roommate had errands, then we arrived at our friends’ apartment and the driver had to leave again to pick up one of the guys who lived there from work. The final result was that I didn’t get home until 12:30. I was so utterly exhausted this morning that I called in. I finally got out up and out of bed at 10:30, in spite of distractions from Muttface and her bored/hungry/playful morning routine. She’s equally responsible for not letting me sleep later than 7:30 all weekend.

I’m hoping tonight will be different. I’m still feeling drained, though less so, and I am teaching my dance class at 6:30. Perhaps I’ll be worn out enough to sleep like the dead. A blessing, that would be.

Sweet dreams when you sleep, mes amies.

-m0rg4n