Dreaming of Work
I’ve been having these weird dreams lately. Well, maybe not all too frequently, but here and there. Enough for me to notice. And noticing them I am, especially when I’m in the middle of them in the dark stumbling around my room like I’ve got places to be. That’s what really sucks about them, these dreams. It’s always a shot of adrenaline and my heads shoots off the pillow like a bouncy ball springing up and up and I’m on my feet now. Looking for my phone, looking for the light switch. I’ve got places to be. My head’s a twelve-pound bowling ball and I’m carrying it and rubbing the holes that are really just eyes, tired and drawn out eyes. Rubbing them and looking for my pants and the light switch. Looking for my shirt and belt and car keys and the light switch because I’ve got places to be dammit!
This isn’t part of the dream, this is just the crux, a waking nightmare. More of a waking annoyance. Nothing about it is scary, just horribly obnoxious. Interrupting my sleep, jarring my entire REM cycle into jagged, heart-blipping lines that are beeping, beeping, beeping. Pound up and down and back up again like my head because I’m awake and stumbling around my room and really, it’s just 3:45 in the morning and there’s not one sliver of light floating around outside.
And I usually find the light switch, before I find my pants, shirt, phone, or car keys or any of the other personal effects one never needs when going to sleep. Stored away for the next robotic morning. But it’s only 3:45 a.m. and I need sleep still, but I’ve got places to be, if I could just wipe my eyes hard enough that the fog encasing and hugging my brain so tight would wipe away too. So I flip the light switch and for five seconds I start making my bed like a good boy does. Like I do every morning when real sunlight slips in through my windows, right between the wooden blades. I toss the blanket across the bed and I’m standing there looking diagonal and crossed at the the whole scene because I know I’m being absurd and broken, something’s not right. Why should I have to worry and be going places at 3:45 a.m.?
And I know I shouldn’t, but for five seconds, maybe six on a bad night, I make that bed and rub my head, and feel like I’m seven steps from dead. Just need more sleep, it’s only been three or four hours now, not even a full REM cycle. I’m slicing cycles in half and what’s worse, my dog Mia is over on her puffed up pillow bed, legs crossed, head angled over at me with a set of eyes that say what in the hell are you doing? Man, it’s 3:45 a.m., and she can’t read, but she still knows it’s 3:45 a.m. My eyes lock with hers for a second and everything floods out of my ears like steam and idiocy. So I shake my head, scowl at myself, knead the skin that’s bunched up across my forehead. She’s right, as per usual. Go back to bed. Places to be? It’s right in front of you, dummy. The bed, the sheets, the cover and fuzzy blankets. Crawl back in because tonight at 3:45 a.m. you have no where to be but here. Work is in the morning, and it might feel strange because dreaming about work feels a lot like the actual work. But it’s still dreaming, all the same.
Feature photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash
