Dream addict. Sleep disordered.

my thoughts are fractured.

fragmented. fraction-ed. fraying. frail.

just got off the phone with my sister. talking to family usually makes me feel really lonely. too much space full of things i want to say. unsaid things they'd be bored to hear about.

bad dreams still going strong. you would think i'd strive to stay up, try to avoid sleep, try not to dream and avoid Freddy Krueger.

but, no.

when i start to get more sleep-disordered, when dreams get bright-vivid-intense, i want to sleep even though the dreams are bad 99% of the time. because that other 1% is so much better than real life.

yeah, yeah, i know, that's stupid and bad. blah blah blah.

it's probably like a drug addiction. i've taken plenty of prescription drugs, but i've never done coke, heroin, lds, mushrooms, or anything like that. so arguably i'm not qualified to say. i've never taken any drug that makes me feel bliss or love or happiness.

but asleep? i have felt several emotions, pretty much all the good ones, when I was asleep, and i've never felt these emotions in real life. at least, not with the same intensity. it's one of the reasons i don't believe i'm "in love" with Garret.

of course, i love and care about Garret. you can't be around someone for years and not care about them. but it's very difficult to make sense of emotions and feelings when all of waking life is this flat, gray, tasteless dust. and love is this flat, gray, tasteless concept. but then, a handful of times, when i was sleeping, it wasn't like that at all. everything was this wet, red, vivid, plush. and Love was this wet, red, vivid scream. and even though it wasn't REAL, i still have the knowledge and the memory of the feeling. and it's hard to exist in a gray reality when you have memories like that.

i've always wished i could just sleep/dream all the time but have control of it. get really good at lucid dreaming.

sometimes i lose track of which way i'm fighting...

like, one day i might think that i should work on fixing my messed up sleep cycles. and being a bright, shiny eyed citizen of reality is the goal.

but then other days, i think-- what the hell am i trying to do that for? what's so great about living in reality? i don't particularly care if something is REAL, i care that it sucks. and i'd rather feel amazing and be able to fly even if that's "fake."

Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta...

I'm not really sure where to even try to correct it.

Gamma has to do with language and memory processing. Beta is wide awake. Alpha is awake but relaxed and not processing much. Theta is light sleep. Delta is deep dreamless sleep, resetting of internal clocks.

I'd guess I'm never in Delta. Theta is where you dream, so I know I'm in that one a lot.

Here's where I'm curious... if I stay up and don't get much sleep at all... sleep deprived and starting to hallucinate- what would that be? When I do that, it feels like I'm asleep, and the hallucinating part is kinda like dreaming, so can you be in Theta when you are technically awake and walking around?

Regardless. I think I'm a dream addict. Chasing a good trip despite all the bad ones.

Relationship nightmares

Why can't I have reoccurring GOOD dreams?? Does that happen to anyone? It should.

I'm still having bad dreams about my ex.

I don't want him in my head. But he won't get out.

I really do not want to dwell on all the stupid unhappy crap in my life over and over again. But what am I supposed to do when I keep dreaming about the same things??? I can't control my dreams. My dreams are forcing me to dwell.

Dream 1: I'm half-asleep, lying in bed and I can feel that someone is in the room. The guy presses down on my shoulder, shoves me into the mattress/pillow. Like he's going to attack me worse, but he's just getting warmed up. I try to escape, plan to fight back. But I can't see. I turn the light on but it goes dim and then I run through the house and to another light and then into the bathroom and I turn the water on and I splash water on my face and I can feel my eyelids opening and closing with my fingertips, but I can't see. I start to panic about being blind, and I wake up for real.

Dream 2: Mike's there. He has family- I'm not sure who all is there, but sense of people, his kid, his wife/girlfriend who is wearing this weird monochromatic pink dress- it's unflattering but shows off that she's pregnant. I'm alone with no family. Garret isn't there either but I think I'm talking about him. I'm on a phone with lots of long silences. I'm wandering around a parking lot and knocking little chunks of bark off of trees and then I'm sitting in a living room having to listen to Mike talk. Everything is uncomfortable but polite. I want to leave but I'm not sure where to go. Ryan and Washington are a mixed in peripheral dream, but Ryan's distracted and can't talk to me either.

I figured out a long time ago that dreams about my ex aren't actually about my ex. But that doesn't actually help. It might be simpler if they were.

Dreams about an ex are often about a current relationship. Whenever I have a bad dream about Mike, which is often, I always feel like it's a sign that I should get out of my relationship with Garret.

But then I never do, because I logically list all the really good things about Garret and why it would be really stupid of me to leave him, especially over a dream. So I stay. And then I keep having nightmares. And then I go through the whole cycle of doubt all over again.

Obviously, I'm jealous of Mike's family. I'm not very close with my family. Garret doesn't have any siblings and we don't have any kids. I'm sure that if I had a loving and supportive family, more than just Garret, like, a whole handful of people or something, then I probably wouldn't have nightmares. But I don't. All I have is Garret. And Garret is gone 99% of the time, so I don't even really have him.

I don't know. I feel like there is no point in continuing to rehash it all, so I really do try not to think about it, but my dreams won't let me have peace. So then, I feel like maybe there is something I need to rehash because why do I have to keep fixating on things I'm unhappy about?

The blind dream has me very upset because dreaming that you are blind is supposed to mean something along the lines of refusing to see the truth or not being able to see something clearly.

So that is not assuaging my paranoia.