MAKING ROOM FOR NEW GROWTH

It was a dream that I have had off on and since I was a child. Something large and human like attacks me in my bed. I can feel it’s large hands pressing down on my arms through the blankets. I can feel the weight of the thing pressing me down and started to shake me. I open my mouth and scream but nothing comes out or my scream is muffled. I awake with a start. This nightmare might have started after my sister and I went through a spook house at the fair. We sat in a little car that travelled on a track that wound its way through a dark building. There was nothing particularly scary about the building. It was dark with narrow hallways, lights flashed randomly. The scariest part was the random harry hand that would reach out of the darkness and touch me, grabbing at my shoulder or pulling my hair. It had been years since I have had that dream, but there I was in the early morning hours waking up in a fright. My black coat is hanging on my closet door and when I opened my eyes, it gave the appearance of a person standing near the foot of my bed. It took me a moment see it as the coat and not a menacing figure.

It seems that me and Mr. Sandman are not getting along at the moment. It is not just because of the above nightmare incident. That is just one example of a nights sleep these days. The night before that one, I had eaten half a gummy and consumed some glasses of wine. Then I stayed up way way way past my bedtime. By the time Michael forced me to step away from the puzzle we were working on, it was well past midnight. Sleep should have happened the minute my head touched the pillow, but it did not. My brain was rolling with chatter. I made a menu and grocery list for the next week and when my brain was done with that it just kept on buzzing. I don’t know how long I laid there thinking about all of the things. I remember muttering “Shut up!” and really focusing on sleeping. When Michael and I finally finished the puzzle, I saw apes and aliens every time I closed my eyes. When I am sleeping, my dreams are wild and crazy in a way that I can not remember the next day. I just know that weird shit went down in my dreams when I wake up the next day at 4:00 AM. Yes…4:00 AM is my new wake up time. I did not choose this. There is no specific reason for being awake at this time. I am not getting up to rush to the airport for an early morning flight. I am just awake. I don’t do anything productive at this time. Instead I lay there and think about how I should still be sleeping.

Tomorrow is the first day of the last month of this year. I would say that all of this is normal for me for this time of year, but the brain chatter feels more erratic and crazier than usual. This makes perfect sense because this whole year has been everything unusual. I keep relating my brain chatter to an act of conservation. Like how they do controlled burns across the prairies in the Flint Hills. You burn up the old stuff to make room for new growth. I must have a lot of stuff in my head that needs to be cleared out so I can start thinking and planning up new schemes and adventures for the next year.