i went to bed last night a bit earlier than i normally do, because i haven’t been sleeping very well recently.  i fell right to sleep, but was awakened a couple of hours later by a very disturbing dream.

it was disturbing for a couple of reasons.  for one thing, most nights i don’t dream (i mean i know everyone has dreams, but mine usually go unnoticed and unremembered).  what’s more, even when i have dreams i can recall, they never are so vivid and disturbing as to wake me up.  the last time that happened i think i was in elementary school (i still remember bits of the dream).  so that should give you some indication….

last night i dreamed i had tiny, white, crawling bugs under the skin in my fingers and hands and i kept picking them out.  i don’t recall how many i ended up removing, or how long it went on, but it was enough that when i woke up, i immediately felt my hands for scars, or holes.  i felt none, but was unconvinced, so i went to the bathroom and turned the light on.  i spent several minutes going back and forth over my hands with my eyes and fingers, looking for signs of the little bugs.

the dream was so vivid, so realistic that i kept thinking i would find evidence of them under my skin.  it was quite creepy and 10 or 15 minutes passed before i was sure i was bug free and calm enough to go to bed confident i wouldn’t stumble back into that dream.

i don’t generally believe that dreams relate directly to my waking life, but i’m curious what meaning, if any this dream has….  man, it was creepy!

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2:49am.  that’s right.  i’m awake; in fact, i never went to sleep.  make no mistake, i tried.  i laid in bed for at least 30 mintues tossing, turning, and yawning, but sleep didn’t come.  this has been happening occasionally for years… since high school.  it doesn’t happen often and it happens less frequently than it used to, still, here i am still awake.

i’m physically tried and have been yawning every ten minutes, or so, but every time i lay down and close my eyes, sleep eludes me.  i’m not sure whether or not it would be easier to cope with if i didn’t know the cause.  it happens when my brain reaches a point where it is constantly working on something.  i’ve had bouts of insomnia to which i couldn’t attribute a cause, i hadn’t a clue what the hell it was my brain was struggling with.  however, that doesn’t happen to be the case this time.

i’m not sure which is worse at this point: not knowing what it is that has put my brain in high gear, or knowing, but not being able to do anything about it….  another yawn and now it’s 3:08am.  i may try closing my eyes again and see what happens.  worse case scenario, i’ll just be right back out here in 15 minutes.

the sun will be up in a few hours and at this point i haven’t a clue how tomorrow will go….  tomorrow, as they say, is another day (though technically today is already tomorrow).  i just hope i’ll be in a brighter mood tomorrow (today).
finally, 3:18 and i’m off for a third attempt at sleep.

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it’s been a while since i felt like this, maybe a couple of years.  i thought i was done with these sorts of mood shifts, but i guess one in more than two years isn’t all that bad.  even though this is a familiar feeling, i think i can better describe it than maybe i could in the past.

it’s like something that starts out as a small, quiet, occasional rumble in my brain; it’s a problem i can’t solve.  it reminds me of a joke by lewis black about the girl who says “if it weren’t for my horse, i wouldn’t have spent that year in college.”  if you don’t know the joke, go try and find it, it’s pretty fucking funny.  anyway, the point is it’s a problem that takes up more and more of my brain, like an equation or line of code that forces a computer processor to use more and more of its power to solve and the thing gets stuck in a loop….  my brain is stuck in a loop.

now the small, quiet, occasional rumble has turned into something much more annoying.  i’ve become increasingly preoccupied and as my brain uses more and more of its power attempting to resolve this problem, my mood is being affected, as is my sleep.  i wouldn’t call this an ‘episode,’ as i still generally feel better than did back then, but there is no doubt this is causing problems and i can’t deny the possibility that i’m cycling up to one.

i think what makes it all worse is that i know the solution(s), i just haven’t been able to force myself to take steps toward those solutions.  my brain is caught in a loop and to head off any serious setback, i may have be forced to return to the doctor, even if it’s only once or twice. (sigh)

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