Last night I was plagued by nightmares about being drugged with sodium pentothal, held down by sniper fire in a beautifully furnished Victorian home with George Bluth. Between the clinkety-clink of the cubes in her low-ball, Mrs. Bluth said, in a moment of clarity, “If you can’t live for yourself, you might as well live for others”. The words made more sense to me than almost anything I’ve heard in the last month. She gave me a clockwork wink and disappeared, leaving us alone against her hired red beams and smoke grenades.

When I stepped outside to head to work this morning, the winter chill startled me into a false sense of alertness, but it was quickly taken over by a general feeling of uneasiness. The dreams were unsettling to say the least (I haven’t slept so poorly in over a month), and the last thing that I wanted to do was start the day off with a walk on a winter morning before there was any light out. I kept waking up every two hours, and as good as it was to feel exhausted enough to fall sleep again, it felt terrible to not actually be able. It’s as if I haven’t slept at all, and tragically enough, I start work for the new year today. I was hoping to be well rested for the first day back, but that isn’t happening, so I’ll be fighting off a tremendous urge to sleep when I get home. I’ll try to burn through it, which shouldn’t be hard.

In any case, I use the words, “more sense to me than almost anything I’ve heard in the last month” because John is in town. This is the person who knows me better than anyone else I know, better even than myself. Within half an hour of arriving, he helped me realize that I do require acceptance in my relationships, a need that has stemmed from childhood, that the best road to achieving my goals is not always the easiest one, and so many other countless things that I couldn’t have seen for myself. This winter break has been the worst in years, but now, John is here. I haven’t seen him in over six months. Yesterday, I couldn’t stop smiling, after finding him in the peephole of my front door.

This is my vacation.

What a nightmare. I just dreamt that I adopted another cat (few weeks old), but I had no car to take it to the vet, no money to feed two pets, no time to spend with it, and the helpless feeling of being unable to handle such a responsibility. One cat is enough for now, thanks.

Ugh, I’ve been plagued by nightmares lately. Yesterday it was kitchen knife wielding twin sex murders, today it was nuclear holocaust meltdown Christmas party. Ever feel like there was nothing to make you feel better than writing about it to make it go away? Yeah.

I’m scared to fall asleep again.

I had a dream last night, a dream that seemed so real, a dream I did not want. A dream of scattered memories sewn together, creating such a perfect world, where love was requited, where I was blissfully happy. When I awoke, everything I had was gone.

All I was left with was hope, and emptiness. I immediately knew that what I had was false, too perfect a world for me to live in. I felt bitter, as if I had something taken away from me which I felt was rightfully mine.

Why would my subconscious trick me so? Why should I feel so terrible, so laden with hope? Couldn’t my mind simply give up this struggle, freely, without interference?

Hope is not a good thing for me. It makes me weak and vulnerable. When I have no hope, then all is known. Nothing is uncertain. I am sure of what I have and what I don’t have. Progress can be made on accepting this. But when hope enters my mind, all progress is lost, and I can only try to fight for what I’ve gained.

Yet I wish to dream again tonight, of memories strewn together, for they were so wonderful, that any let down seems worth it. I don’t know why I’d want to torture myself again, feeling empty and bitter when I wake up. Somehow, the high seems worth it, like some addictive drug Pandora was selling out of her magical box of plagues and death.

Perhaps I actually do believe in what my hope is telling me. Perhaps I need to believe in something, that somehow this will change, that things will be different. Or perhaps I’m simply a fool, willingly falling for something that may make me happy, but empty in the end.

Nothing good ever came out of Pandora’s box.