Restless nights
Apr. 11th, 2007 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicI spent the weekend at my mom's, house-sitting while she and her boyfriend were away for Easter break. It was divine—no-one asking me to do things or requiring me to talk or otherwise interact, the TV on only when I wanted it to be, time to write and think in peace, my own kitchen, my own thermostat, and dead quiet at night. I'd almost forgotten how fantastic it is to have my own space. Got some much-needed and much-put-off clothes shopping done too. By Sunday evening I was in my Zen place.
I got a little nervous Saturday night when it started to get dark, though—probably because I was alone and had never stayed over there before, even though I've stayed at plenty of places alone and am usually fine, even ecstatic—and was worried I'd have bad dreams. But the night passed uneventfully and I woke early, feeling refreshed.
Which is why it's especially weird that for the last three nights, when I've been back home in my comfortable bedroom with nothing beyond the usual to worry about or stress over, I've had weird dreams. Weirder-than-usual dreams. Unpleasantly weirder-than-usual dreams. I wasn't going to say anything here, but this morning's (which woke me up for the night at 4:30) had Wilson in it, so what the hell. Maybe talking about it will disrupt the pattern.
Last night, I dreamt that I missed the first 15 minutes of House because I was running around trying to get the recording equipment to work, the first attempt at which kept failing because the VCR kept switching to DVD and wouldn't record, and the last attempt at which required barbequing a certain kind of watch whose metal coating wouldn't bubble in the heat, only then it was a piece of chicken and we had to baste it. (Don't ask; I don't know.)
When I finally sat down, the patient everyone had been frantically working on had slipped into a coma. Wilson was there, taking care of things, and had a theory about what happened to her that involved repeated episodes of police brutality, which he was basing on his own mistreatment when he'd been assaulted with pepper spray. He laughed sarcastically and held up a small, round, clear canister of the stuff.
He started raising his voice then, talking about radiation or gas, as he turned to the woman's son (about the same age as the Chase-kid from last night's episode, only with dark brown hair and eyes like Wilson or the kid from "Socratic Method") who was also in the room with the woman's husband. Standing between the boy and his father, Wilson told the kid he had to run tests or take a sample (it was hard to hear him over the loud episode music), but it was clear to us as viewers that he was lying, spinning this story for some reason, maybe to see if the kid would agree to it, maybe to scare him. He laughed again, incredibly creepy, and held out a sample jar, covering his nose and mouth with a cloth with his other hand as if the kid were contagious, backing the kid up against the wall without touching him and keeping him at least an arm's length away, and the boy was terrified but put on a brave face as he listened to Wilson shouting and agreed to do what he said even though Wilson was acting crazy.
Break for commercial, and I sat there on the couch taking notes for the write-up about how incredibly disturbing this was.
The end. I woke up breathing hard. Maybe it's hard to tell from the plain summary, but the whole latter half of the dream, from Wilson's second laugh on, was incredibly disturbing. Not cool. Even being able to pick out exactly where many of the separate elements of the dream were drawn from (last night's episode, my review, one of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nightdog_barks's stories...) didn't help at that time of night.
Monday night/Tuesday morning, a group of us were on a long-distance subway train in California going to camp or some kind of retreat or vacation or something, talking about Fresno ("The third largest city in California, right?" I was saying, and kept trying to get people to tell me things about it, because I was upset at knowing almost nothing about where we were going or why). Then it was nighttime and we had to pass through a Wraith-infested section of tunnel, which would have been all right if we kept quiet and turned the lights out, only there was a mechanical malfunction suddenly (possibly sabotage by someone on the train) and all the windows and doors opened so that the cars were pretty much only floors and ceilings and seats, leaving us completely vulnerable, so we had to be utterly still and silent and try to control our fear lest the creatures sense us. Very, very tense as the train entered the wide, gray tunnels, and people kept making involuntary/accidental sounds, and we were all cringing but couldn't shush them because that would make more noise.
On top of that, the whole scenario had a déjà vu/Groundhog Day feel to it, where I knew we'd been through this before and I knew what we had to do and what would happen and who would be taken if we were attacked, but was resigned to going through the same thing again and again.
I can't remember if we were attacked. Afterwards there was a scene where we were in a lecture hall anddaasgrrl (whom I've never met) was talking with some guy about strategies and likely outcomes, and he disagreed with her and said something stupid, and next thing I knew she'd written out a bitchy response on looseleaf that I knew was going to trigger fan-wank, only it was too late to stop it. (Sorry, daasgrrl, if you're reading this—I'm sure you're very nice in person!)
And then those of us who'd escaped the Wraith were flying around in a plane looking for a safe place to land, and someone recognized that we were just north of NYC, so we touched down and found ourselves in a nice woodsy neighborhood where we were invited in to someone's house who had all these traditional Passover/Jewish foods laid out on the kitchen table for us, and Wilson or RSL was there, and I sniffed appreciatively at some smoked whitefish salad and beets in front of him because I wanted him to know that we had this Jewish solidarity thing going on.
The end.
At least thedaasgrrl and Wilson/beets things were funny. The rest, not so much. The Wraith aren't even scary, but I'm susceptible to being-hunted dreams, so I shouldn't be surprised that my brain seized on them as a change from, say, being relentlessly tracked by carnivorous dinosaurs.
I don't know. I don't know where this is coming from. Usually I have very nice or at least neutral dreams, and when the rare uneasy dream or nightmare comes along, there's an explanation for it. This isn't hormones or trauma. Maybe it's my brain's way of telling me I'm more upset at what I'm watching than I know, or maybe the shows are merely a convenient wellspring of images, perhaps for relieving leftover anxieties from the weekend.
I can't remember the one I had Sunday night/Monday morning that left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable, but I also dreamt that night that it took John and Rodney until their 70s to get together, after this epic can't-be-together-though-they're-destined love story. They were going to celebrate their anniversary by going on this Air Force simulator-but-not thing where John was the pilot and Rodney took the back seat, both in helmets, because they'd done this once before "for real" when they were both younger and now they wanted to show their trust and care for each other by doing it again voluntarily. Only their plane had a problem which John recognized just as the ride was starting, and he stood up and waved his arms and shouted "Mayday! Mayday!" but the operators couldn't see or hear him and the ride was in progress and he and Rodney had no choice but to close up the plane and get ready to fly, and it was all very upsetting because they'd waited so long and it was supposed to be enjoyable but now not only was it dangerous, Rodney wouldn't feel safe or happy when that had been the whole point.
And then John was wandering around some random European city, all cobblestoned streets and tiny shops, trying to find Rodney, having realized he wanted to be with Rodney and therefore also annoyed that Rodney wasn't there, except then he got a message from a shopkeeper that he was to go down to the waterfront, and there he found Rodney waiting for him with a houseboat and food he'd prepared because he wanted to be with John too; Rodney hadn't been callous, he'd been several steps ahead of him.
Ze end.
On the bright side, last week I had a good one where I gave David Nykl (Zelenka from SGA) a walking tour of London. And the week before, when I was watching a couple of SGA episodes a night, Rodney kept making cameo appearances.
On the downside, I am now a zombie—zombironic?—and may need to leave work early because I can't really keep my eyes focused or think straight. P.S. My closest co-worker gave her notice today.
I got a little nervous Saturday night when it started to get dark, though—probably because I was alone and had never stayed over there before, even though I've stayed at plenty of places alone and am usually fine, even ecstatic—and was worried I'd have bad dreams. But the night passed uneventfully and I woke early, feeling refreshed.
Which is why it's especially weird that for the last three nights, when I've been back home in my comfortable bedroom with nothing beyond the usual to worry about or stress over, I've had weird dreams. Weirder-than-usual dreams. Unpleasantly weirder-than-usual dreams. I wasn't going to say anything here, but this morning's (which woke me up for the night at 4:30) had Wilson in it, so what the hell. Maybe talking about it will disrupt the pattern.
Last night, I dreamt that I missed the first 15 minutes of House because I was running around trying to get the recording equipment to work, the first attempt at which kept failing because the VCR kept switching to DVD and wouldn't record, and the last attempt at which required barbequing a certain kind of watch whose metal coating wouldn't bubble in the heat, only then it was a piece of chicken and we had to baste it. (Don't ask; I don't know.)
When I finally sat down, the patient everyone had been frantically working on had slipped into a coma. Wilson was there, taking care of things, and had a theory about what happened to her that involved repeated episodes of police brutality, which he was basing on his own mistreatment when he'd been assaulted with pepper spray. He laughed sarcastically and held up a small, round, clear canister of the stuff.
He started raising his voice then, talking about radiation or gas, as he turned to the woman's son (about the same age as the Chase-kid from last night's episode, only with dark brown hair and eyes like Wilson or the kid from "Socratic Method") who was also in the room with the woman's husband. Standing between the boy and his father, Wilson told the kid he had to run tests or take a sample (it was hard to hear him over the loud episode music), but it was clear to us as viewers that he was lying, spinning this story for some reason, maybe to see if the kid would agree to it, maybe to scare him. He laughed again, incredibly creepy, and held out a sample jar, covering his nose and mouth with a cloth with his other hand as if the kid were contagious, backing the kid up against the wall without touching him and keeping him at least an arm's length away, and the boy was terrified but put on a brave face as he listened to Wilson shouting and agreed to do what he said even though Wilson was acting crazy.
Break for commercial, and I sat there on the couch taking notes for the write-up about how incredibly disturbing this was.
The end. I woke up breathing hard. Maybe it's hard to tell from the plain summary, but the whole latter half of the dream, from Wilson's second laugh on, was incredibly disturbing. Not cool. Even being able to pick out exactly where many of the separate elements of the dream were drawn from (last night's episode, my review, one of
nightdog_barks's stories...) didn't help at that time of night. Monday night/Tuesday morning, a group of us were on a long-distance subway train in California going to camp or some kind of retreat or vacation or something, talking about Fresno ("The third largest city in California, right?" I was saying, and kept trying to get people to tell me things about it, because I was upset at knowing almost nothing about where we were going or why). Then it was nighttime and we had to pass through a Wraith-infested section of tunnel, which would have been all right if we kept quiet and turned the lights out, only there was a mechanical malfunction suddenly (possibly sabotage by someone on the train) and all the windows and doors opened so that the cars were pretty much only floors and ceilings and seats, leaving us completely vulnerable, so we had to be utterly still and silent and try to control our fear lest the creatures sense us. Very, very tense as the train entered the wide, gray tunnels, and people kept making involuntary/accidental sounds, and we were all cringing but couldn't shush them because that would make more noise.
On top of that, the whole scenario had a déjà vu/Groundhog Day feel to it, where I knew we'd been through this before and I knew what we had to do and what would happen and who would be taken if we were attacked, but was resigned to going through the same thing again and again.
I can't remember if we were attacked. Afterwards there was a scene where we were in a lecture hall and
daasgrrl (whom I've never met) was talking with some guy about strategies and likely outcomes, and he disagreed with her and said something stupid, and next thing I knew she'd written out a bitchy response on looseleaf that I knew was going to trigger fan-wank, only it was too late to stop it. (Sorry, daasgrrl, if you're reading this—I'm sure you're very nice in person!) And then those of us who'd escaped the Wraith were flying around in a plane looking for a safe place to land, and someone recognized that we were just north of NYC, so we touched down and found ourselves in a nice woodsy neighborhood where we were invited in to someone's house who had all these traditional Passover/Jewish foods laid out on the kitchen table for us, and Wilson or RSL was there, and I sniffed appreciatively at some smoked whitefish salad and beets in front of him because I wanted him to know that we had this Jewish solidarity thing going on.
The end.
At least the
daasgrrl and Wilson/beets things were funny. The rest, not so much. The Wraith aren't even scary, but I'm susceptible to being-hunted dreams, so I shouldn't be surprised that my brain seized on them as a change from, say, being relentlessly tracked by carnivorous dinosaurs. I don't know. I don't know where this is coming from. Usually I have very nice or at least neutral dreams, and when the rare uneasy dream or nightmare comes along, there's an explanation for it. This isn't hormones or trauma. Maybe it's my brain's way of telling me I'm more upset at what I'm watching than I know, or maybe the shows are merely a convenient wellspring of images, perhaps for relieving leftover anxieties from the weekend.
I can't remember the one I had Sunday night/Monday morning that left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable, but I also dreamt that night that it took John and Rodney until their 70s to get together, after this epic can't-be-together-though-they're-destined love story. They were going to celebrate their anniversary by going on this Air Force simulator-but-not thing where John was the pilot and Rodney took the back seat, both in helmets, because they'd done this once before "for real" when they were both younger and now they wanted to show their trust and care for each other by doing it again voluntarily. Only their plane had a problem which John recognized just as the ride was starting, and he stood up and waved his arms and shouted "Mayday! Mayday!" but the operators couldn't see or hear him and the ride was in progress and he and Rodney had no choice but to close up the plane and get ready to fly, and it was all very upsetting because they'd waited so long and it was supposed to be enjoyable but now not only was it dangerous, Rodney wouldn't feel safe or happy when that had been the whole point.
And then John was wandering around some random European city, all cobblestoned streets and tiny shops, trying to find Rodney, having realized he wanted to be with Rodney and therefore also annoyed that Rodney wasn't there, except then he got a message from a shopkeeper that he was to go down to the waterfront, and there he found Rodney waiting for him with a houseboat and food he'd prepared because he wanted to be with John too; Rodney hadn't been callous, he'd been several steps ahead of him.
Ze end.
On the bright side, last week I had a good one where I gave David Nykl (Zelenka from SGA) a walking tour of London. And the week before, when I was watching a couple of SGA episodes a night, Rodney kept making cameo appearances.
On the downside, I am now a zombie—zombironic?—and may need to leave work early because I can't really keep my eyes focused or think straight. P.S. My closest co-worker gave her notice today.
no subject
Date: Apr. 11th, 2007 05:04 pm (UTC)My closest co-worker gave her notice today.
That's a bummer. I hope you'll be able to give your notice soon as well.
zombironic
LOL! The mental picture that conjures up is quite amusing.
no subject
Date: Apr. 11th, 2007 05:20 pm (UTC)That's too bad about your co-worker. It's sad when there's no one at work that you can talk to about work-stuff -- just makes it that much more stressful.
no subject
Date: Apr. 11th, 2007 06:06 pm (UTC)House was... uh... haunting someone else's dreams, I suppose. He's never been as present in my subconscious as Wilson. Or Chase/Jesse Spencer, for some reason.
no subject
Date: Apr. 11th, 2007 06:09 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's a bit sad, though mostly in a selfish way (why wasn't it me first?!). There are other people here I'm friendly with, but she sits right next to me and we go to lunch a couple of times a week.
no subject
Date: Apr. 11th, 2007 06:22 pm (UTC)Mollock = Moloch
Ball = Ba'al
Two of the ancient, fire-breathing, baby-eating gods of the Old Testament.
Yes, I'm a too-clever-for-my-own-good nerd. Heh.
no subject
Date: Apr. 11th, 2007 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 11th, 2007 11:59 pm (UTC)The frustration with setting up the recording device at the beginning could be related to your trying to find a new job/worries at your current employment.
The rest of it... I don't how to interpret it. With Wilson acting all weird and creepy, you could be unsure about someone in your life. I'd say someone you trusted, but that might be too literal an analysis.
Don't know about your SG dream either, but that one sounds positive. Love that took forever to come together but did eventually; it's very hopeful.
no subject
Date: Apr. 12th, 2007 01:53 am (UTC)Did I at least get to have dinner with Wilson?
Strangely enough, I had a fannish dream just last night, and I don't often have them either. Part of it involved Hugh and RSL (definitely them, not the characters) at my place for some reason (although not my actual house, just 'my place'). RSL was upset about something and/or drunk, and at one point he got up and Hugh went after him and put his arm around him and they walked off down the hall, with RSL leaning quite heavily on Hugh. Later, they disappeared into one of the bedrooms (dammit). And I filmed all of the above with a videocamera, but on going to play it back discovered that due to some weird format incompatibility (PAL/NTSC based) it was unviewable. Sob.
Then later I was in an open-top convertible in the backseat with Fran, and I was me, but at the same time I 'was' Robin. The two Japanese guys from Heroes, Ando and Hiro, were driving. And they turned out to be bad guys, and I ended up choking Hiro with one hand while pinning Ando down with my opposing elbow after they tried to attack me/us along the highway. How I managed this I don't know, but I held on until the police came XD
Your weekend sounds really lovely!
no subject
Date: Apr. 13th, 2007 01:00 am (UTC)I had a fannish dream just last night, and I don't often have them either.*
Sounds cool! I love the arm-slinging, disappearing-into-the-bedroom bit and the SuperDaasgrrl fight. (Do you occasionally have dreams like that, where you're an excellent fighter? I used to have them in high school when I was stressed out, and they were so energizing, if disturbing to describe to people because they were so violent.) And that sucks about the failure to record the Hugh/Robert love! I can imagine the surge of disappointment dream-you felt. Though it is funny that even in your dreams, those two refused to have sex for you -- I'm thinking of what happened in your meta-crack almost-Halloween-party story.
*(I do have fannish dreams frequently -- just not unpleasant ones.)
Weekend was divine. I was just on the phone with my mom reliving the glory of it. :)
Getting through your hell week all right, I hope...?
no subject
Date: Apr. 13th, 2007 01:12 am (UTC)I find that when a dream disturbs me, piecing out what in my life caused it in the first place makes me feel better.
Yes, definitely. Writing it down is a big help for me, not only because it contains (or captures, in the case of a pleasant dream) the emotions that gave the dream such impact, but also because in the very act of writing the sentences out, it becomes incredibly clear what many of the parts were trying to say.
Like here: "running around," "frantically working," "upset at knowing almost nothing about where we were going or why," "completely vulnerable," "very, very tense," being terrified, being separated from a parent [emotionally], and all the feelings of having no control over what's happening -- very telling about what I'm going through with my life right now. You're right that the John/Rodney one is hopeful, and perhaps also as telling. Maybe I do think that while it may seem that no-one's reaching out to help (which intellectually I know isn't true), my friends and family are there for me.
Heh. I didn't have the time to write up a full-out analysis of all this yesterday, and anyway this post was long enough as it was for something so personal.
no subject
Date: Apr. 13th, 2007 02:20 am (UTC)I rarely have dreams I remember - only when I get woken up in the middle of them, basically. I hadn't really given it any thought until right this moment, but most of them involve wandering around or travelling from place to place. Which doesn't really suprise me! I don't remember ever fighting people in my dreams before though. I have to say. I'm impressed by your propensity for dream-violence - hey, I guess it's better than going around bashing up real people. I was also amused that you just HAD to know something about where you were going. Facts and figures, people! ;)
I remember being so excited about showing the PROOF of the Hugh/Bobby love to people, so yes, it was disappointing! Sniffle.
Much more relaxed this week, thanks - that and I anticipate sleeping in until AT LEAST sunrise tomorrow XD
no subject
Date: Apr. 13th, 2007 03:30 pm (UTC)You're right that the John/Rodney one is hopeful, and perhaps also as telling.
Very telling! If your brain can come up with positive endings to stressful situations, it means that you still have confidence/hope/etc. And maybe it's also a reminder: hey, things suck right now but I'm lucky to have the support that I do.
The happy-ending dreams are my favorite.