3 AM
I’ve been here before but it’s been awhile I’m happy to say. Seems as if I’ve been making positive strides in getting restful sleep despite the tendency to still wake up two to four times a night. One of the things “they” don’t tell you when they’re spouting all that “eat healthy and drink your weight in water every day” – healthy living stuff is that the more veggies and water in your diet, the more time you’ll be spending going back and forth to the bathroom, lol. No wonder folks lose weight. Those nightly treks to the toilet add up.
Anyway, this morning’s visit to 3 AM is courtesy of a nightmare. Well, a very disturbing occurence in a dream, how about that? I don’t suffer nightmares (night terrors I think they dubbed them in the 80’s) like I used to. Man! As a kid, I’d had these horrific, recurring dreams. They got worse and would come with that sleepers paralysis thing by the time I was a teen. My mom is convinced my reading material of choice was the cause. Looking back, I’m inclined to agree with her – reading Poe, Lovecraft, and King since the 6th grade might indeed have had some influence on the types of dreams I had. Being bullied and sexually mis-handled might have added its own demons, but that’s not something we talk about.
Anyway, it was another one of those where someone unseen comes into my bedroom and gets in bed with me. I absolutely HATE those dreams. Even more so than the ones in which I’m being chased by something I can’t see. Why does the brain do this? Doesn’t it understand it’s doing us more harm than good by allowing the things to creep out of the lower levels?
4 AM
I love the sound of train horns blowing in the distance as the trains cross intersections not far from my house. It’s a lonely sound some nights, on others, it’s a call to my Muse and I’m blessed with inspiration. This morning, the horn’s call floating to me across the miles fills me with nostalgia. There’s an ex whose picture still makes my heart beat a bit faster. I miss the friendship, not the failed romance. He was the only romantic lead I’d had with whom I could talk in-depth about the written word. Movie scripts / plots, books, philosophies…he’d answer my questions thoughtfully, point out things I may have missed, then listen as I worked through things with my rambling, wordy style. He wasn’t all that interested in my writing, but he’d patiently sit as I stopped a conversation in mid-sentence so I could write the idea that had just landed in my head. I miss that most at times like this.
Dana Ellington, MAPW 