Into the storm

I’ve been having chaotic dreams lately.  Last night I dreamed I was in one of the Apollo capsules, hurtling towards Earth, confined, filled with vertigo, and terribly grateful land on Earth and lean on a fence post to recover.  Yes, I know they did not land on the Earth.  It was a dream.

Or in halls filled with zombies.  They kept turning me into a zombie, and I kept turning back.  Crowds and chaos everywhere.

Vivid dreams.  Through my work, I am slowly descending from 30,000 feet into the stormy clouds below.  This is painful–I feel like I am on a rack sometimes, being stretched in horrible and grotesque ways–but it is progress.

For me, although I think many are this way, trauma always feel like I want to rest, to sleep, to get past the overtiredness, but sleep never does the trick.  The tension, and the fatigue the continual hyperarousal creates, never goes away.  I want to nap for ten years, but ten years would not suffice.  I would wake up the same.  A lifetime would not suffice.

What I am doing now, I am sometimes sleeping 12 hours, but waking up feeling that through the fight something has diminished, and this is good.

And to be clear, I am not even remotely depressed.  I am working directly on my brain, and it is yielding new, better patterns.