madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dreamscape September 12, 2003 I woke up this morning grumpy, tired and headache-y after a night of tossing and turning. I�ve been having the strangest nightmares lately. I dreamt that I had been captured and taken prisoner by these dark unknown figures, and the only way to freedom was down this steep embankment that lead to a river. The embankment was covered with a thick layer of slime, rotting plants and garbage. As I climbed down from the window, the smell of bog filled my nose and I reflexively gagged. My memory flashed on this dried up lake my grandpa took me to when I was a kid. We drove for miles down a country road until we reached, what appeared to be a giant desert with a large murky puddle in the middle. I felt like I�d touched down on the moon. The surface was unlike anything I�d ever seen, with squares of crusty dried up earth that resembled giant reptilian scales. But what I remember the most was the smell. See, underneath all those brittle layers of dirt was enough water to rot everything that had previously lived there�frogs, fish, plants. And the resulting smell clung to my hair, my clothes, and my shoes long after I was went home. I could never totally get that smell out of my shoes and later remember throwing them out and saying they were stolen during gym. Shoes. The first sting of cold slime underfoot brought me back to reality. I wasn�t ten anymore at the lake with grandpa. I was a grown woman running away from monsters and I had no shoes. They had stripped me down after taking me and I was naked except for underwear and a sports bra. I could feel the slime ooze between my toes as I gripped them on rocks and roots, trying not to fall. I chanted my mantra � �just move get the hell away�. But my heart raced. I was afraid. I knew that at any moment I was going to lose my balance and slip and die on the side of this embankment and rot away into a pile of sludge. But I kept going. I made it about half way to the river when the sun gave up and dipped below the horizon. In one deft stroke, darkness fell and the moon rose above me like this glowing orb. You know how dreams are � things happen on a different time line, a scale that is not measurable or sane or linear. But nonetheless, there I was half-naked, shivering, and bathed in cold moonlight. I didn�t know whether to be thankful for the light, or afraid for what I could no longer see. Then my foot caught something thick and greasy feeling. I stepped down and it distinctly popped then squished with a wet explosion. My stomach turned into a pot of boiling acid and I decided to be thankful for what the darkness occluded. With the fallen sun, the reptiles emerged. Snakes slithered in giant hissing piles while rats scurried in legions too many to count. Lizards crept from bushes with their slurping tongues and crocodiles materialized from a patch of fog. Vultures and bats swooped between branches, close enough that I could feel the rush of air around my head. The ground opened up and millions of cockroaches, beetles, centipedes, spiders, and worms spilled across my path in a sickening puddle. I was frozen. My mind raced�what should I do? Off in the distance in front of me, I could see the reflection of the river in the moonlight. It was so close I imagined the sweetness of fresh running water. I almost could taste freedom. But behind me, the path back to the house was clear of animals, but it lead to my captors. I scrambled to think of another way out. I stood there trying to decide for what felt like an eternity until the sounds of the animals blurred into one deafening noise� my alarm clock. I woke up sweaty and shaking. The images were fresh in my mind, vivid and sharp and they left me feeling dirty and exhausted all day. I guess recounting them here didn�t help either. I�ve always had nightmares, for as long as I can remember. Sometimes they are terrible � closer to night terrors where I�m woken up in the middle of the dream from the sound of my own scream. That is really creepy because it�s like waking up to an echo in your bedroom�and you�re the only one there. I shiver just thinking about it. But it�s the violent dreams that leave me head-sick for days after. These are the scenarios where I�m hacking people up, killing my family, bludgeoning someone�s head in with a hammer, drowning a bucketful of kittens because I cannot feed them. (I can�t believe I just wrote that down on paper) But yes, I�ve had really horrific violent dreams and many times they are against people I know or am angry at or people that wronged me in the past. I�ve read that depression is merely anger unexpressed, and this would make sense of my dreams. I�m an extremely non-violent person in real life, who cringes at the thought of hurting a flea so I guess that anger has to go somewhere. My other nightmares are dramatic dreams with frightening death or fear concepts thrown in. Probably the most famous reoccurring dream I have, is one where I look in the mirror as a young woman then literally age and die right before my eyes. I watch as my skin wrinkles, my hair turns grey and falls out, my cheekbones turn into jowls and my teeth yellow and crumble. I look down at my hands as they slim into slender stalks, the nails brown and split and liver spots appear. The skin dries and stretches over the bones like taut canvas. I feel my organs dry up and my heart seizes up and I see my life flash before me. When I look back up at the mirror my whole body is a rotting skeleton. Lovely, eh? I have that aging/teeth crumbling dream in every setting imaginable. Sometimes I�m walking up a staircase and I hear something �clink� to the floor. I look down and see part of a crumbled tooth. When I reach to pick it up, more teeth fall from my mouth. I cover my mouth and race to the bathroom where the mirror reveals that my teeth are bleeding and crumbling. Then the whole aging scene happens. A lot of my nightmares are about people chasing me or trying to kill me. Some of them are about me trying to protect my cat or my baby or my brother or a little girl and someone is trying to kill them. Anyway�. While reading a few weeks ago I came across the passage, �Hungry the way an ulcer needs to be fed.� And it made me stop in my tracks. I�ve been very perplexed by this gnawing feeling I get in my stomach shortly after I eat. I logically know it can�t be hunger since it happens within 30 minutes of eating, but food seems to quell the sensation. (Well, water works too, but only for a few minutes) Sometimes the gnawing turns into burning and then into sharp pains, but mostly it is an ever-present empty-gut feeling that makes me turn to food for relief. Not that it�s an excuse, but it does explain why diets have seemed particularly torturous to me in the past 3 months. Whenever I try to go without food for more than an hour my gut is wrenching with what I misinterpreted as hunger. I never considered it was simply my ulcer begging to be fed. Off to the gastroenterologist I go� 5:39 p.m. - September 12, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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