Melatonin

Well, the good news is that I have a Sagira in my lap... but the crap is that i'm back in utah.

(Hmmm. I did just notice that I am thinking in capital I's, but even so, "i'm" back in utah. Apparently, it's that much of a downer.)

I did not bother to sleep last night since my plane was scheduled to leave early, and we had to leave for the airport at 4am. It took me until 3 to finish packing, as I had put it off in favor of playing MarioParty8 with my brother-- (it's the easiest video game he owns.)

SO, I should be VERY tired right now. I should be happily asleep at 4am and NOT wide awake.

But unfortunately, and duh, I am a bit of an idiot.

My mom read this article about Melatonin, so I got some yesterday. And, even though I have somewhere important to be today at 9am, and even though I was already plenty tired to sleep tonight, I unwisely decided to take a pill before bed. I have fallen asleep a few times but then the DREAMS woke me. Here's a summary of one:

As a child, I witness an altercation between a strange man and a little girl at my grandparents house. (Then skip ahead a few years.) A year before Papa's death, in 1994, I find the bones of that little girl. Nothing comes of it because then he dies, and so no one can pay attention to my stories of bones because they are too grieved about Papa. Then circumstances come to light that indicate Papa may NOT have died of a heart attack (like he did in real life) but that there may have been foul play. There is a sense of danger. I am in danger. Then I am in a strange place with many people. They are in white and their backs are toward me. We are all looking out a window that shows the front window of my own house. I turn to a girl next to me and I ask her if she can see plants in the window. I ask her if they are green and yellow and purple. She says yes, and this is a bad thing. I grab her hands and look at her and intensely ask-- How do I get better? Her face gets blurry and melts off her head. I turn to the back of another person, and I put my arms around him, but he morphs into someone else, someone scary, a women with gray hair and dark, deep eyes who grabs my hands and wants me to believe her, insists it is not her fault. I am afraid, and then I am somewhere else. I am rocking on the floor talking to my grandmother and she is sorry she didn't believe me about the bones and I am crying (and I can feel all of it, complete with drool running down my chin) and I am hitting the floor and screaming, "I saw him HIT that little girl, I saw him HIT that little girl!"

...And that's where I woke up with my heart racing. (2nd dream had Audrey Hepburn in it, and my mom was an English teacher.)

Now, it is possible that how I feel right now might be due to other stuff- like I am just extra tired or something. My throat is all closed up from being back in the 6th most polluted city in the USA, so that can't help my sleep either. But, I am giving the credit to the Melatonin for now.

I feel both tense and in a good mood. Possibly similar to a ton of caffeine? Zoloft? I can't relax, but I don't mind. That makes me suspicious. I think- shouldn't I mind? My brain and body are definitely in disagreement right now.

Since I'm too amped up to sleep anymore, here I am... so... here's what I noticed so far that was interesting/unusual to me:

First, the dreams were VIVID. Much more intense than my average.

Second, they were still somewhat nonsensical and dreamlike, but they had a definite PLOT. This is unlike my average dreaming, which is usually more of an endless wandering of ideas rather than an actual story.

Third, there was a sense of TIME. I thought in dates, like 1994, and the dates and time made sense, wasn't so loose/expanding. My Papa (grandpa) really did die in 1995 of a heart attack, though none of the other events corresponded to reality.

Fourth, and the most shocking to experience-- in all the dreams I recall having tonight, I had a fixed sense of identity. Usually I shift in and out of 1st/3rd person, and sometimes I am myself and sometimes I am the other characters in the dream. The usual sense is fluid and hazy, not concrete. i am usually everything/everywhere in a dream, and I am not used to being just Amanda. Also relating to this is-

Fifth, I spoke. Sometimes my dreams have conversation in them, but mostly there is just a sense of things being said. A sense and understanding of motives/intent without actual speaking. Usually I just know what's going on.