192: Recurring dream
Dreams, Christ alfrickinmighty.
True, I talk of dreams / Which are the children of an idle brain...
I try not to let my mind idle.
Better to keep it busy, keep it whirring and crammed with data and facts and stats and hypotheses and contingency plans and if all else fails an opera or two. Better to handle this as a chess game* where one plays three, four, five moves ahead-- better not to think about where you are here and now. How fucked you are. What you're doing.
Work enough at disciplining the thoughts through the day and it actually does help, come nightfall, at keeping out dreams. (So does exhaustion.) For instance, I haven't dreamt of that courtroom, the Holy Trinity, their prayer, in..... at least a few weeks. Maybe a whole month. That's nice.
I hate that dream. I hate waking up sweaty and cold and nauseous, hate having to do breathing exercises to get my pulse back down to normal, hate fearing to fall asleep in my own damn bed, hate most of all the fact that it feels like a betrayal not just by my body, with the chills and perspiration, but by my mind too, and I don't fucking need that turning on me. Tricky nasty bastard of a subconscious.
There's other dreams too, have been others, but currently that one's in the place of honor on the list of Reasons I Have to Have Coffee.
Being awake in those a.m. hours.... makes me think of waking up back in Chelsea, hearing Angela... hearing her wake up and make noises that weren't quite screams. Months and months after David this went on, the waking, the sounds she tried to muffle, having to turn all the lights in the apartment on so that she would know he wasn't there. Sitting up with her, holding her, letting her cry, whispering nonsense words because I didn't fucking know what to say. Had no goddamn clue, so instead of anything useful all she got from me was bits of poetry, stories about the lives of the composers, disjointed lines from the sutras, anything I could think of. I would talk and talk at her until my voice went and then I'd hum. Sometimes she'd go back to sleep but even then not let go so I'd stay there with her, and sometimes it'd just go until dawn.
And I would wish again and again that I had killed him. Badge be damned.
....she was always apologizing, in those months. For keeping me awake, for dropping dishes, for windows being left open, for windows being closed, for being jumpy, for essentially existing. Over and over this leitmotif, this line of self-blame, and between the two of us it's a wonder we didn't set something on fire with sheer intensity of guilt. But she was seeing a shrink, and as time went by she woke less frequently, the dishes stopped breaking quite so often, she got better.
Still calls me sometimes at three and four a.m., brightly passing it off as "only" insomnia, or nerves over an upcoming performance, and I never point out that she's between shows at the moment or that I can hear her coffee machine going in the background providing her with insomnia-in-a-cup. She airily apologizes for waking me or keeping me awake and I tell her don't be a fucking dumbbunny bitch and she responds that just because I'm a self-centered asshole doesn't mean she is and these words between us translate as are you okay? and I'm sorry, I'm sorry and thank you.
She asks about my work. And I lie to her, because she doesn't need it, doesn't need the knowledge that I'm doing highly illegal things for highly illegal people, doesn't need to be worrying about me more than she already does in her general well-meant pitying way. And maybe because I'm a little afraid, afraid what she'd say. She'd disapprove, but that goes without saying-- what I fear is that she'd wonder how....
Not how I could do it. But how I could cross this line for strangers when I didn't, couldn't, for her.
So these days I'm apologizing, I'm the one saying sorry, even if I don't tell her why, and I'm the one waking up sweating and shaking, and there's nobody in the other bedroom I have to bother trying to keep quiet from.
*It should perhaps be noted I play a shitty game of chess.
fandom: boondock saints
muse: paul smecker
Words: 746
True, I talk of dreams / Which are the children of an idle brain...
I try not to let my mind idle.
Better to keep it busy, keep it whirring and crammed with data and facts and stats and hypotheses and contingency plans and if all else fails an opera or two. Better to handle this as a chess game* where one plays three, four, five moves ahead-- better not to think about where you are here and now. How fucked you are. What you're doing.
Work enough at disciplining the thoughts through the day and it actually does help, come nightfall, at keeping out dreams. (So does exhaustion.) For instance, I haven't dreamt of that courtroom, the Holy Trinity, their prayer, in..... at least a few weeks. Maybe a whole month. That's nice.
I hate that dream. I hate waking up sweaty and cold and nauseous, hate having to do breathing exercises to get my pulse back down to normal, hate fearing to fall asleep in my own damn bed, hate most of all the fact that it feels like a betrayal not just by my body, with the chills and perspiration, but by my mind too, and I don't fucking need that turning on me. Tricky nasty bastard of a subconscious.
There's other dreams too, have been others, but currently that one's in the place of honor on the list of Reasons I Have to Have Coffee.
Being awake in those a.m. hours.... makes me think of waking up back in Chelsea, hearing Angela... hearing her wake up and make noises that weren't quite screams. Months and months after David this went on, the waking, the sounds she tried to muffle, having to turn all the lights in the apartment on so that she would know he wasn't there. Sitting up with her, holding her, letting her cry, whispering nonsense words because I didn't fucking know what to say. Had no goddamn clue, so instead of anything useful all she got from me was bits of poetry, stories about the lives of the composers, disjointed lines from the sutras, anything I could think of. I would talk and talk at her until my voice went and then I'd hum. Sometimes she'd go back to sleep but even then not let go so I'd stay there with her, and sometimes it'd just go until dawn.
And I would wish again and again that I had killed him. Badge be damned.
....she was always apologizing, in those months. For keeping me awake, for dropping dishes, for windows being left open, for windows being closed, for being jumpy, for essentially existing. Over and over this leitmotif, this line of self-blame, and between the two of us it's a wonder we didn't set something on fire with sheer intensity of guilt. But she was seeing a shrink, and as time went by she woke less frequently, the dishes stopped breaking quite so often, she got better.
Still calls me sometimes at three and four a.m., brightly passing it off as "only" insomnia, or nerves over an upcoming performance, and I never point out that she's between shows at the moment or that I can hear her coffee machine going in the background providing her with insomnia-in-a-cup. She airily apologizes for waking me or keeping me awake and I tell her don't be a fucking dumbbunny bitch and she responds that just because I'm a self-centered asshole doesn't mean she is and these words between us translate as are you okay? and I'm sorry, I'm sorry and thank you.
She asks about my work. And I lie to her, because she doesn't need it, doesn't need the knowledge that I'm doing highly illegal things for highly illegal people, doesn't need to be worrying about me more than she already does in her general well-meant pitying way. And maybe because I'm a little afraid, afraid what she'd say. She'd disapprove, but that goes without saying-- what I fear is that she'd wonder how....
Not how I could do it. But how I could cross this line for strangers when I didn't, couldn't, for her.
So these days I'm apologizing, I'm the one saying sorry, even if I don't tell her why, and I'm the one waking up sweating and shaking, and there's nobody in the other bedroom I have to bother trying to keep quiet from.
*It should perhaps be noted I play a shitty game of chess.
fandom: boondock saints
muse: paul smecker
Words: 746