Insomnia Blows

If you’re a frequent reader, you’ve probably noticed that I often mention my chronic insomnia. Lately, it hasn’t been so bad, but last night, it came back with a vengeance and combined with some free-floating anxiety to give me a really fun night. I had three anxiety dreams in one night, which really seems a bit excessive, especially when I woke up from each dream and then had trouble falling back to sleep because I was, well, anxious. I used to have very standard anxiety dreams, some variation of waking up one day to realize (i) that it’s the end of college, but I don’t have enough credits/forgot to take a required class and I won’t be able to graduate, or (ii) that I have an exam that day for a class I’ve forgotten to attend all semester. I’ve had these dreams for years now, even thought it’s been a long time since I’ve been in school. But lately, my anxiety dreams have reached a whole new level.

The first dream related to something that’s going to happen tonight. I’m supposed to go to my father’s to meet some friends of his who are visiting from out of town. I’m looking forward to this and am not anxious about it. In the dream, I was running late, and things just kept making me later. For some reason, I had to give my boss a ride home from work (which makes no sense, since I don’t drive) and I ended up in Virginia, where I ran into my mother, and we couldn’t get back into the city because of something to do with the new Wilson Bridge.

In the second dream, I was watching a movie and then suddenly I was in the movie. Ralph Fiennes was a bank robber and I was his partner. We were very sophisticated bank robbers and the bank manager just let us in to take the money for some reason. Just as we were leaving with a box of cash, the bank suddenly caught on to what we were doing, and we had to make a run for it. With a security guard following me, I started running. I ran up an escalator. And then another escalator. And then another. I finally ended up on the top floor of the building where I ran into the ladies’ room, where I saw someone exiting a stall who was wearing stockings and women’s shoes, but was clearly a man. At that moment, I realized he was the police and I was about to be caught, at which point I woke up. I lay awake for approximately an hour trying to figure out what I could have done differently to avoid getting caught (and being pissed at Ralph for apparently getting away.

The third and final dream was perhaps the most disturbing. In it, I had just given birth to a baby girl. Even though I had only given birth the day before, I was out and about with the baby. Lord Kissington was nowhere to be found, so I guess I was a single mother. The baby was totes adorable, and she was basically a superbaby. At only one day old, she could already smile, and at one point, she figured out how to crawl out of her little seat. I started to think, “Uh-oh, I’m not sure I’m equipped to handle a superbaby.” I was at some sort of convention, and I left the baby with a friend for a few minutes, because I had lost track of her seat. I managed to find the seat, but I was having a really hard time finding my way out of the convention place, and then people started chasing me down a hall, at which point I woke up. I had a moment of lucid dreaming during all this, where the adorable baby grabbed my finger in her little hand, and I thought to myself, “Hmmh, maybe I should have a baby. I’ll have to think all this over when I wake up.” Of course, by the time I woke up, the whole being chased by persons unknown thing had freaked me out and pushed out thoughts of how great a baby would be.

Just what the hell is my subconscious trying to tell me these days?