I can’t sleep. I’m falling into the rut of insomnia again. This time I’m pretty sure why it’s happened, but it’s a rather ridiculous reason… I’m having nightmares. Every single night for the past week it’s been the same: everything starts out beautifully, I’m in a relaxing setting – most often on vacation with a friend or two – and then, suddenly, everything goes horribly wrong. The remaining two thirds of my dreams are then dedicated to chases, kidnappings, monsters that need killing, people who need rescuing – you know, the works. I’m my own personal Batman, but without stately Wayne Manor, the cool car, or the lovely gadgetry. Oh, and I don’t know ju jitsu, I don’t have a cool costume, and I’m absolute crap at defending myself. Wait, I guess I’m nothing like Batman after all…

These dreams, as silly as they may sound, really aren’t fun at all. Once the chases get going and the intensity builds, my heart begins to race and – even though I know it’s just a dream – the pressure and stress on my body makes everything hurt. When I finally wake up from one of these dreams, it can take as long as a half an hour to calm down to the point that I can sleep again. Or, if it’s time to actually get going on the day, I’m so exhausted that it feels as if I never slept at all. So, in short, it really stinks.

Over the past few days I’ve gotten myself into the habit of waking myself up when the dreams get to the breaking point. Once a dream becomes stressful enough, my sleeping mind can feel my heart beating too rapidly, and thus I force myself to wake up. I’m not sure how I do it, but last night for example I was running away from kidnappers bent on murdering my friend and I. We were being chased through a house with endless rooms and millions of doors, all of different shapes and sizes. Ultimately, my friend and I became trapped in a small bedroom, which we got into by crawling through a very small doorway. The only problem was, there was no way out. We searched the room for anything – small doors, large doors, hidden doors, hatchways, windows we could break, anything. There was no way out, and the kidnappers were about to burst into the room. I told my friend to hide in one of the many closets that lined the walls, and I braced myself against the door. The kidnappers began pounding on the door, trying to break in. Just as they began hacking at it with an ax, I remembered thinking to myself, “This is going to end badly, you’d better just wake up now.”

I woke up just then, my heart pounding in my chest, out of breath, and wanting to fall back asleep and pick up from where the dream began – some cute cottage in the mountains, next to a pristine lake. It was 3:30 in the morning and it wasn’t until just past four that I was able to sleep again. But sure enough, there began a dream about a monster made out of some form of ink, who would reshape itself after oozing through walls, floors, ceilings, you name it. It chased me through a highrise building somewhere in Germany, its only recognizable features being its pitch black substance and two very frightening, piercing eyes. I woke myself from that dream at 7:00am.

I’m sure all of this would be easily analyzed by any halfway decent psychologist. I tried looking them up in an online dream dictionary, but it really didn’t tell me anything too shocking. I’ve tried taking sleeping pills and pain killers (separate nights, not together obviously) to see if that would help, but instead it just made everything all the more surreal. I’m not sure what to do now, but all I know is I certainly don’t feel like falling asleep right about now. Sure, I’m tired, but it’s just not worth it. It’s not like sleep is doing me any good anyway.

So here I am, doing practically nothing, and eating some chocolate pudding. After not eating much dinner I realized some time after midnight that I was quite hungry. However, the laziness took over so I decided, rather than cooking something, I’d just grab a pudding cup and be done with it. Obviously, it took me a while to actually get to the pudding cup, but at least I made it there in the end, right?

I wonder what tonight’s dreams hold in store. I’m hoping for a break from the stress – maybe a leisurely weekend in Italy, or an extended stay in the highlands of Scotland. Perhaps a private getaway to Fiji, Bora Bora, or St. John? A scenic drive through New England in the autumn? Heck, I’d be happy if it were a dream of nothing but just sitting some place cool, sipping on some root beer, and doing absolutely nothing of any significance whatsoever. Just so long as I’m asleep, my heart’s going at a reasonable pace, and I can wake up without feeling as if I’ve run a marathon.

And now I’m out of pudding… and now it’s going on three in the morning. It took me quite a while to write this blog, apparently. Sorry, I’ve been multi-tasking. 🙂 Now that I’m puddingless, I think I’ve lost my stamina. So I think I’ll be leaving you for the time being. Wish me luck, Batgirl’s off to fight more demons. I guess I didn’t release as much stress as I thought I did while I was in Europe. Whoops.