Monday September 7 2020
I woke up in a pissy mood this morning, still processing the emotional hangover of angry dreams. Sometimes these night visions involve stories with characters that aren’t me or anyone I know. Likely they’re composites of several people, but they’re not deja-vu-ey or familiar. It’s kinda like watching a movie, but the director’s been drinking and everyone else is on experimental drugs and the playback is set on Random. My dreams are usually confusing, sometimes entertaining, and this time, anger-inducing.
One of the key themes was that I, as the point-of-view character, realized that what was going on around me was book-worthy (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Trust me). I desperately wanted to write this story, but some of the details kept getting away from me. Things like people’s names and a time-frame of events. The frustration with this turned to irritation, moving through the progressive levels of anger, when finally I reached a rather impressive case of wrath, when the paper I was writing on was destroyed by water. In this case, it was seawater, a recurring theme when dreaming of frustration and unachievable goals.
“Let me tell you about this dream I had,” I say to my kid, a double-major in Psychology and Sociology.
“Please don’t,” he says.
But it doesn’t take a scholar to recognize that I’m feeling out of balance again.
While I don’t get why the ocean looms so large as a representative of bad feelings, the inability to have control of my own life shows up in my dreams as buffets of food I can’t have, cars without gas pedals, impaired vision, or a loss of speech. And when I’m really out of sorts, the anger that I can’t express during the day is released into the darkness of night by my sub-conscious mind.
Adulting is hard. It’s harder when you’re a super-sensitive, anxious, procrastinating perfectionist with a flair for self-deprecating humor.
Hey, but somebody’s got my back. This encouraging overpass message of “Don’t Give Up” appears on my commute as my daily motivational you-can-do-it. Thing is, I didn’t even consider giving up as an option before.
I recognize what I’m feeling today is just another one of those periods when the pay-attention-to-this list only grows while the time-sensitive items are swinging over me like a pendulum. I’ll take care of these things, as I always do. But it comes at a price of sacrificing my mental well-being for a while.
Meanwhile, I leave you this inspirational message.
Donnatopia 