So This Is What Hot Feels Like

[copied from dland]

It's a quarter past three -- there's no one in the place .... okay, okay, but it really is just about quarter past three in the early hours, and I just had a dream so I had to get up and write this down. I don't remember the dream now, except in it, everyone was reading my online diary, it was the thing to do in America, man, it was popular and getting attention, press, etc., and just before I woke up I knew I had to write about what it felt like to have this diary that was all the rage, and the title of the entry had to be

So this is what hot feels like

cause I was on fire. But now I don't remember why, exactly; that was the early part of the dream and I've lost it. But the really cool thing here is, I get to dream again now, and although I don't actually remember the details, mostly, I am aware of dreaming all through the night, and that my dreams are generally amusing and entertaining and full of activity, plot, and, appearing in cameo roles, just about everyone I ever knew or read about or saw on film.

I'd about had it with the insomnia just about six months ago. After bouts of it -- cycles, really -- since the age of 12, I was mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore. But the thing that really got me were the creepy dreams.

Typical creepy dream:

Exhausted, I get into bed around 9 pm and fall asleep almost at once. (Really, not in the dream.) Then (in the dream) I become aware of something frightening. Perhaps there is a prowler in the house, or some awful animal in my room. And -- in the dream now -- it is about 9 pm and I am lying in my bed, asleep, but now awake and frightened. (Still dreaming.) I try to get away from the danger by waking up, but I am paralyzed and cannot move or speak or call out. I am terrified. I know that [the Hubs] is just in the next room and will come as soon as I call, but I cannot move. At last, in my terror, I realize that I am asleep and I wake up.

At last, awake. The danger is past. Needing to reassure myself that all is well, I attempt to get up and look around the house, or get a drink of water. But I am still paralyzed. I struggle to move or to speak. I know now that the Hubs is sleeping right next to me, I can see him, I want to wake him up, to pound him into alertness so that he can help me. But still I cannot move. At last I realize that I am still really sleeping, and I urge myself to wake up.

I wake up. It is about 9:15 pm. I do pound one hand against the empty part of the bed where only a moment before I was certain he was sleeping. Awake now, truly, I can hear a TV in an another room. I open the bedroom door and see the lights on in the house and step out blinking into the light. Someone is there somewhere, watching TV in the evening hours, the Hubs or one of the girls. "Are you okay?" they would ask. "Did you have another one of those dreams?" I would nod.

I looked it up in a book, as is my wont to do. It's a condition called Sleep State Misperception. Your body-mind can't tell if you're asleep or not, and doesn't know whether to paralyze your muscles (which keeps you from dancing around the house all night, or killing your spouse, or generally acting out the activities of your real dreams) or how much to let you know about it.

The creepy dreams scared the living shit out of me, and made me afraid to go to sleep at all ever. That and the insomnia, and so I was getting about 20 minutes of sleep a night. That's when I started taking the sleeping pills. I could fall asleep at 10 pm, wake up to go to work, and sleep a solid night in between. Of course there was the time I got up to go to work and took what I thought was an allergy pill, but it was a sleeping pill, and when I did get to work I fell asleep for the day in the nurse's office, but that's another story.

Thanks to the sleeping pill there were no more creepy dreams. In fact, there were no dreams at all. If I did dream, I didn't know it. I've not been aware of dreaming at all for the last six months. I didn't even know I missed it. Then just about two weeks ago, after the Hubs saw me sleep-walking in my drug-induced deep sleep (and sleep-falling on the floor, just managing to avoid cracking my head open) I stopped taking the magic pill. I was afraid of the creepy dreams, but more afraid that I would fall down the steps or try to leave the house while I was drug sleeping. So it was a question -- sanity or safety? As the Reverend Jim would say, tough choice. I went with safety.

Haven't had a creepy dream yet, and I am so enjoying the amusing dreams. Although I am definitely sleeping much lighter and not as much (remember, it's a quarter -- now half -- past three in the morning), I'm really awake when I'm awake and never groggy or feeling all druggy, so in general it seems to have been a good choice.

Even though the diary dream is no more than a shadow now, I do know what hot feels like. Because like nearly every other time I wake up in the middle of the night now, I wake up with -- and maybe because of -- a nice little hot flash, you know, that lovely little experience women of a certain age get to have. So when I woke up just before with those words in my head "So this is what hot feels like" I was actually also mopping off my face with a towel and feeling the sweat on my back.

I love irony. Irony is one of my truly favorite things in the whole world and all of life.


ENTRY #10