Sleeping Confuses Me

I was restless the night before last, unable to sleep but exhausted. I wanted nothing more than to leave my thoughts and slip into the sweet oblivion of nothingness that can be sleep. I wanted to wake up on the other side of something. Instead, I woke up feeling as if I'd been tensed the entire night, my eyes clenched shut and dry as a rock, as if I'd closed them so tightly that tears couldn't come. I could tell that it was too dark outside to be time to wake up. And while I thought it was perhaps 3 or 4 in the morning it was really 6:35 am and really too late to go back to sleep. Instead, I convinced myself to drag my exhausted ass to my apt complex gym. Impressive, no?

I spent basically all of yesterday exhausted. Everything hurt and yet nothing hurt. Like having a low-wattage electric current going through your body all day (or so I would imagine, I've never actually experienced something even slightly similar) but electricity for some reason seems an appropriate likeness. I know I looked terrible. People even commented on it. I'm grateful I was still able to get work done without making a mess of everything I edit. That's the trouble with being a copy editor -- there's no room for being truly distracted by anything. When things are going in my life or I'm tired or lazy, mistakes get to the client. Drama. Panic.

It was nice to fall asleep gracefully last night, like I'd recovered grace from wherever I lost it. I woke about as peacefully, having just had a lucid dream where I'd been in Boston with my family visiting my sister. I was trying to catch up with everyone on the streets but it had turned dark and I had lost my sense of direction. The dream changed dramatically and I was essentially flying through the air with not as much control as I would like, trying to get back on the right road in daylight. As I realized I was flying instead of driving and unable to get quite back to the road and land, I thought, hey I'm dreaming anyway, who needs to be on the road? and set out to do whatever it was I wanted. I landed in the lake next to the road and started flying up on trees, stripping bark for fun, doing back flips, forward flips, flips in the air, whatever whim or fancy struck me at the time. I adore flying dreams.

It was pleasant to wake up this morning, in contrast to waking up the day before. It was 8:30 but I went to sleep at 10:30, so I can deal with getting 10 hours of sleep and no more. Normally I can't sleep that late but obviously I needed it.

I think it's funny that I had a lucid dream without thinking about it whereas if I actually have the goal of a lucid dream, it never really happens. Funny that the conscious decision to have one results in nothing whereas naturally I tend to stumble upon them as I go along. Sleeping confuses me....

[Note -- Ha! No spelling errors found by spell check! That means no typos as I was typing this either. I am awesome.]