Kind of disturbing dream imagery.
So I've finally kicked the worst of the black plague I've had for the last week (now just my face hurts from sinus pressure, but at least I can breathe), and I haven't taken any kind of medicine (side note: I'm insanely sensitive to all kinds of chemicals, especially considering my body mass. Seriously, two drinks and I'm on the floor, and this is the tolerance level I've built up. If I have a headache, I take one Advil, cut in half), so my head is clearer than it has been in at least a week. And so my subconscious decides that now's a good time for horrific dream imagery. I haven't even watched any horror movies.
On with the dream:
I'm at this party or something, one of those dream-gatherings where people you know from all the different parts of your life are there. My childhood best friend was there (we still see each other sometimes, but she lives on the other side of the country and our lives have diverged to the point where the only reason we're still friends is shared history), sans children and husband. We were arguing about something, and I remember looking down at my palm and seeing a scar that doesn't exist running kind of diagonal from pinky to thumb. It was a thin scar, with tiny little stitch marks across it. In the dream I remembered it had been there for ten years or so, but how I got it wasn't important.
So for whatever reason, the scar split open and started oozing pus. Lovely. I looked down and saw something in there. IRL, debris in a wound freaks me out (the thought of it healing up inside me and being there is ick) and I have this phobia of maggots and blowflies and any other kind of buggy thing that literally gets under your skin. So dream me started to freak out, but wanted to get it out of there (real me has done enough self-surgeries to know that these things never go well). I picked at it, and a loop of yarn came out. It wasn't a big piece, only maybe 3 inches. But then there was another piece that I had to kind of dig for. And more after that. So I ended up with my skin peeled back like cold pizza cheese (and that was the texture of it, the underside all bumpy and with bits of blood and tissue clinging to it like sauce) and hardly anything left to the inside of my hand except these frayed scraps of yarn that aren't coming out clean but leaving tiny fibers behind. My dream hand didn't have bone or muscle or anything. Inside it looked like clumps of cheek skin (or pizza crust after removing the cheese) and pus.
It was totally OCD after that, just a bunch of freaking out and nausea, trying to pick out all the fibers with my clumsy, dirty fingers, knowing I needed tweezers at the very least, knowing I should wash it out, but being afraid that the water would make it start to hurt. There was no pain at all, but fear of pain. I remember thinking over and over that it would never heal and I'd lose the use of my dominant hand and kept wondering why it suddenly split open now, when it had been there for ten years and why it hadn't killed me or spread. The yarn didn't dissolve because it was synthetic (which is an oddly specific detail, like all my dreams have).
Then I was trying to get through a bunch of drunk and stupid party-goers to get to the kitchen sink, trying not to let anyone touch my hand or jostle it because I was afraid I'd start to feel it. I ran the water in the sink, but couldn't decide on what temperature to use. I should also mention that I hate the feeling of water over a deep a cut. It makes me gag. Not pain, I'm ok with pain (not that I've ever really had a huge and insanely painful injury to go by), but I hate the weird signals the edges of a cut send to my brain (like no-no-no-not-right-not-right-does-not-compute).
By then, most of the skin had dissolved into like... strings. Like how Freddy Krueger's face looks. I woke up thinking that I knew I had to go to the hospital, but it would be expensive and put me in debt forever because I have no health insurance.
And now, because there's something fundamentally wrong with my brain, my hand and arm are weak. I'd be concerned that I had a stroke or something, but I get like this when I remember an injury to a specific body part (my foot goes numb when I remember my broken toe and my fingers get weak when I remember cutting the tip off my middle finger with a meat slicer 14 years ago). It's like PTSD.
tl;dr: My arm feels like jelly, I'm nauseous, and I'm put off of pizza indefinitely. Thanks for that, subconscious. I know you were trying to help me work through whatever it is you think I need to work through, but you're still a dick.
On with the dream:
I'm at this party or something, one of those dream-gatherings where people you know from all the different parts of your life are there. My childhood best friend was there (we still see each other sometimes, but she lives on the other side of the country and our lives have diverged to the point where the only reason we're still friends is shared history), sans children and husband. We were arguing about something, and I remember looking down at my palm and seeing a scar that doesn't exist running kind of diagonal from pinky to thumb. It was a thin scar, with tiny little stitch marks across it. In the dream I remembered it had been there for ten years or so, but how I got it wasn't important.
So for whatever reason, the scar split open and started oozing pus. Lovely. I looked down and saw something in there. IRL, debris in a wound freaks me out (the thought of it healing up inside me and being there is ick) and I have this phobia of maggots and blowflies and any other kind of buggy thing that literally gets under your skin. So dream me started to freak out, but wanted to get it out of there (real me has done enough self-surgeries to know that these things never go well). I picked at it, and a loop of yarn came out. It wasn't a big piece, only maybe 3 inches. But then there was another piece that I had to kind of dig for. And more after that. So I ended up with my skin peeled back like cold pizza cheese (and that was the texture of it, the underside all bumpy and with bits of blood and tissue clinging to it like sauce) and hardly anything left to the inside of my hand except these frayed scraps of yarn that aren't coming out clean but leaving tiny fibers behind. My dream hand didn't have bone or muscle or anything. Inside it looked like clumps of cheek skin (or pizza crust after removing the cheese) and pus.
It was totally OCD after that, just a bunch of freaking out and nausea, trying to pick out all the fibers with my clumsy, dirty fingers, knowing I needed tweezers at the very least, knowing I should wash it out, but being afraid that the water would make it start to hurt. There was no pain at all, but fear of pain. I remember thinking over and over that it would never heal and I'd lose the use of my dominant hand and kept wondering why it suddenly split open now, when it had been there for ten years and why it hadn't killed me or spread. The yarn didn't dissolve because it was synthetic (which is an oddly specific detail, like all my dreams have).
Then I was trying to get through a bunch of drunk and stupid party-goers to get to the kitchen sink, trying not to let anyone touch my hand or jostle it because I was afraid I'd start to feel it. I ran the water in the sink, but couldn't decide on what temperature to use. I should also mention that I hate the feeling of water over a deep a cut. It makes me gag. Not pain, I'm ok with pain (not that I've ever really had a huge and insanely painful injury to go by), but I hate the weird signals the edges of a cut send to my brain (like no-no-no-not-right-not-right-does-not-compute).
By then, most of the skin had dissolved into like... strings. Like how Freddy Krueger's face looks. I woke up thinking that I knew I had to go to the hospital, but it would be expensive and put me in debt forever because I have no health insurance.
And now, because there's something fundamentally wrong with my brain, my hand and arm are weak. I'd be concerned that I had a stroke or something, but I get like this when I remember an injury to a specific body part (my foot goes numb when I remember my broken toe and my fingers get weak when I remember cutting the tip off my middle finger with a meat slicer 14 years ago). It's like PTSD.
tl;dr: My arm feels like jelly, I'm nauseous, and I'm put off of pizza indefinitely. Thanks for that, subconscious. I know you were trying to help me work through whatever it is you think I need to work through, but you're still a dick.