![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I stopped taking melatonin a while ago, it being the only thing I could point to that was making me have hugely disturbing nightmares all the time. (I couldn't pin them on watching tv zombies because "The Walking Dead" was on hiatus. But I still have vivid dreams all the time. Melatonin just pushed them past 11 and into high prime number territory.
So recently I dreamed I was at a party having a conversation with Amanda Palmer, who I pretty much only know of from Twitter (and that she's married to my favorite author, Neil Gaiman. Well, I was mostly listening to her talk because that's mostly how I roll at parties, but whatever. So we're sitting there having a conversation and Gaiman walked up and drunkenly kissed my forehead like he was delighted to see me there before dashing off with Palmer. It was -- nice? Unexpected? Certainly flattering, because Gaiman really is my favorite author and when I try to describe his online persona in my mind the best word I can think of is "avuncular". And I have more proof that my brain does know how to play nicely sometimes (even if nice is mostly composed of misguided wish-fulfillment).
Last night was another story. D & I were on a self-guided tour through New York City looking at shrines left where people had been killed defending civil rights in the current political environment. They were set up like little altars, with candles, fruit, and flowers placed in front of pictures of the deceased, and all inside of elaborately decorated open cabinets, like the Day of the Dead kind. First off, how fucking morbid is that? Thanks, brain, you fucker. Secondly, I only know New York from movies and television. One short wait in the airport while catching a connecting flight to Vermont does not a visit to New York make. Thirdly, someone had been hanging huge dildos from several of the shrines, so it was a fight to see these memorials and not dissolve into giggles and tears at the same time. There was another element that kept popping up at all through the dream, mostly around the shrines: plain white envelopes with my first name hand-written on them, all in block capitals, all in blue ink. Each time I saw one I was utterly convinced that it was there for someone else, and in one case, someone dead. Big cities have lots of people with the same names, New York probably especially so. But I kept seeing these envelopes everywhere.
On waking, I couldn't stop thinking about the envelopes. They were in a dream I had, with my name on them, and yet even in my own dream, I could not accept that someone wanted to communicate with me. Like, way to shirk that whole being-a-person thing. The abnegation runs deep here, obviously. It's not like I haven't been walking around feeling like there's a me-shaped hole masquerading as a human being. Ain't nothing going to fill that emptimess, so why should it be there at all.
And i just feel so so bad that I don't even have the courage to reach out, even in a fucking dream.
So recently I dreamed I was at a party having a conversation with Amanda Palmer, who I pretty much only know of from Twitter (and that she's married to my favorite author, Neil Gaiman. Well, I was mostly listening to her talk because that's mostly how I roll at parties, but whatever. So we're sitting there having a conversation and Gaiman walked up and drunkenly kissed my forehead like he was delighted to see me there before dashing off with Palmer. It was -- nice? Unexpected? Certainly flattering, because Gaiman really is my favorite author and when I try to describe his online persona in my mind the best word I can think of is "avuncular". And I have more proof that my brain does know how to play nicely sometimes (even if nice is mostly composed of misguided wish-fulfillment).
Last night was another story. D & I were on a self-guided tour through New York City looking at shrines left where people had been killed defending civil rights in the current political environment. They were set up like little altars, with candles, fruit, and flowers placed in front of pictures of the deceased, and all inside of elaborately decorated open cabinets, like the Day of the Dead kind. First off, how fucking morbid is that? Thanks, brain, you fucker. Secondly, I only know New York from movies and television. One short wait in the airport while catching a connecting flight to Vermont does not a visit to New York make. Thirdly, someone had been hanging huge dildos from several of the shrines, so it was a fight to see these memorials and not dissolve into giggles and tears at the same time. There was another element that kept popping up at all through the dream, mostly around the shrines: plain white envelopes with my first name hand-written on them, all in block capitals, all in blue ink. Each time I saw one I was utterly convinced that it was there for someone else, and in one case, someone dead. Big cities have lots of people with the same names, New York probably especially so. But I kept seeing these envelopes everywhere.
On waking, I couldn't stop thinking about the envelopes. They were in a dream I had, with my name on them, and yet even in my own dream, I could not accept that someone wanted to communicate with me. Like, way to shirk that whole being-a-person thing. The abnegation runs deep here, obviously. It's not like I haven't been walking around feeling like there's a me-shaped hole masquerading as a human being. Ain't nothing going to fill that emptimess, so why should it be there at all.
And i just feel so so bad that I don't even have the courage to reach out, even in a fucking dream.
Tags:
