Where the Wild Things Are

Recounting dreams is widely considered boring and I get it, I really do. That said, I want to tell you about my dreams, which every night for the past week have had a single overarching theme: lack of control. In them, must make my way through various chaotic situations facing a looming and impossible time constraint. The worst thing is the feeling of frantic futility. If you are making your way through a hoarded dump of a crumbling hotel kitchen to catch the only train of the day and you know you’re doomed to miss it, which was what happened last night, you wake up, as I did, frazzled. But what’s a person with a subconscious to do?

I figure I should go straight to the source- myself. I am basically a happy person, and healthy, with parts that show wear some wear tear but otherwise operate as they should. My family fills me with joy. So why the recent spate of anxiety squirreling through my brain?

I think the answer is simple. What I am trying to repress is what is out of my hands, in other words, everything. How lucky I am to reduce the largest truth of existence to the subliminal! I wake up requiring an hour or so to clear my mind of lingering agitation, and then, it’s back to sunshine.

Apparently, the realist in me refuses to decamp. Sleep swings the door open for it to stage some pretty exhausting dreams, but in the morning, it is effectively captured and fairly effectively contained. I just have to make my peace with myself, trying to tell me something, and sleep offers the only chance that I’ll listen.