nightmare on turk street (health, relationships, addictions)
I had some strange dreams last night. Not that I am trying to turn this blog sound into an exercise in dream analysis, but I often write in the morning and sometimes my dreams are “interesting” – if only to me and if only because of the subject matter.
I haven’t been sleeping well. This is a normal problem for me, but it is not usually so consistent and doesn’t usually last several nights in a row. To be honest, I think I’m caught up in a vicious cycle: I’m more tired than usual during the day so I don’t do much of anything physical, and then I don’t sleep well at night because I haven’t exerted myself much during the day, so then I’m more tired than usual the next day, and then I don’t sleep well the following night … and so on and so forth.
I decided to smoke some marijuana yesterday. Since leaving San Francisco last month I have been in one of my “smoking less to not at all” phases. However, besides helping to calm my unruly bowels, marijuana almost always helps me to sleep better – not if I smoke at bedtime but if I smoke sometime during the day. After tossing and turning so much the night before, I was really feeling in need of a good sleep last night and had the opportunity to partake in the smokable pleasures.
Instead I woke up in the middle of the night to the clacking of high heels on the floor above me. The woman who is renting the apartment clacked around quite a bit before taking the damn things off. She must have been getting home from a night out on the town. It took me a while to get back to sleep after that.
Then I dreamed that my ex-boyfriend (see previous entry) had bought some marijuana and hid it in the room where we were sleeping. (Were we sleeping in the same bed again, as we had done – without sex – for six months after we broke up, because neither one of us could afford to move?) In the dream, I think we were living in the building where I used to live on Turk Street, where they have the tiniest apartments (studios/efficiencies/kitchenettes/whatever you call them) that I have ever seen in my entire life, in all my travels and visits around the country and around the world. Security in the building was such that police entered your room periodically to check for contraband. My ex thought it was a joke and only half-heartedly tried to conceal his stash, since he “knows” that the government is persecuting him. He felt sure that this was some kind of show to intimidate him in some way. I on the other hand was very concerned that he would be arrested again, besides being worried that I might get into trouble, even though I have a medical marijuana card.
I was so angry at him that I punched him – which is not something that I am known to do, even in order to defend myself during the few times that I have been physically attacked. (Does that make me pathologically pacifist, or abnormally averse to violence, or something?) I think that’s what made it feel like a “nightmare”: one of those times when I woke up feeling emotionally down, out of sorts, traumatized even, and which usually only happens when I have a dream that takes me back to my abusive childhood.
I also dreamed that our dog had pissed all over our carpet. After not doing this for months and months, she has suddenly started doing it again lately, since my return from the U.S. We can't figure out why. She doesn't seem angry or resentful about anything, although the household has been a little topsy-turvy lately with the comings and goings of myself and visitors and that kind of stuff. Guess what? When I got up this morning, she had done it again!
