Question of the day.

   What made you smile or cry today? 

   My answer: 

   I don’t remember when was the last time I cried, but something did already make me smile today, namely a super crazy but fun dream I had. I had actually pretty rotten sleep last night. Perhaps it was because I decided I’d try to sleep with my Apple Watch out of curiosity and perhaps the novelty of it made my sleep shallow or something. I fell asleep a bit after midnight so not too bad, but I didn’t really feel like I was sleeping at all, just at some point realised that it’s almost 3 AM and that someone is taking a shower (you can hear basically everything that’s going on in the bathroom from my room and in particular when the water’s running in the shower). I was really surprised because everyone was at home sleeping when I went to bed so I thought it was a bit odd that someone decided to get up in the middle of the night and have a shower. My brain started running 1000 miles a minute as I was thinking what might have happened, and then when the person got out of the shower, I realised it was my Dad, ‘cause I heard him sneezing. In fact once he started sneezing, he kept sneezing for ages, and then sniffling and making other weird noises, including such that actually made the alarms in my brain go off ‘cause it sounded kind of like vomit. So obviously I could sleep no more. Then I heard him go downstairs so I texted him if he’s okay and what’s up, but he wouldn’t respond. After a while I heard him go out and start up the lorry so obviously I figured he was going to work, but that still didn’t explain the middle-of-the-night shower as he usually doesn’t do that if he has to get up at night for work. Usually when he has work early in the morning and late at night and I’m not sleeping, I text him to wish him a nice journey or something, as he usually sits in the lorry for some time before driving off to fill out paperwork and stuff, and he says he likes that and it makes his day better, so I texted him again wishing him a pleasant day, and this time he did reply «Thanks Bibiel» but didn’t reply to the first message. Eventually I figured that perhaps he got a bit of a cold or something and tried my best to convince myself that what I heard wasn’t gagging or vomit, and was successful, but was already too wide awake to fall asleep. 

   Instead, I decided to go to my Brainworld and spent there the whole morning, pretty much until eight. That was the first thing that made me smile, I often smile when I’m in my Brainworld, and last night I mostly really enjoyed myself in there.

   But then when my alarm went off I actually realised I had totally no energy and didn’t feel like getting up at all, and felt a migraine coming. Sleep felt like a dangerous idea as well, because after such a break in between sleeps I would be running a huge risk of getting into the sleep paralysis world. But I felt so tired that I gave into it, took some pain killers, set another alarm for 10, and drifted off to sleep. I indeed did end up landing right in front of «Ian» from my sleep paralysis world, and the first fifteen or so minutes of my sleep were very unpleasant, but this time it was more just because of all the unpleasant physical sensations I get from sleep paralysis and a general sense of fear and discomfort rather than because of any particularly scary content of those dreams. Even though I set another alarm to wake me up, I forgot to turn on Do Not Disturb on my Apple Watch, which in this case turned out to be a great thing, because after some time of being in sleep paralysis, I got an email, so my Apple Watch vibrated and I woke up. I was even more tired now from sleep paralysis and promptly fell asleep again but this time in a proper way. 

   I totally ignored the alarm and kept sleeping past ten, even though it wasn’t really the best quality sleep I guess, sleep after sleep paralysis is usually not, but something’s better than nothing. I also had lots of weird dreams, but it’s only the last one, the one that made me smile when I recalled it after waking up, that deserves attention and that I really remember vividly and so can describe in detail. 

   I dreamt that I lived in some sort of collective dwelling  place for lots of people, like a kind of institution, I have no idea what it might have been but perhaps some sort of long-term lodging place. It had loads of single rooms and it had a reception and if someone wanted to see you in there, there was a whole procedure for them to go through of filling out lots of papers and stuff. So perhaps it was more like a prison? 😀 I was staying in my room and then the receptionist called me and told me excitedly that I had very special visitors, that I’m supposed to be measured for a dress that I’m going to be wearing for a very special occasion. Almost as soon as she said that, the door to my room opened and in came a middle-aged lady and a teenage boy. And it was the lady that was most interesting and that I remember the most vividly. She introduced herself to me as Helenor (my favourite name of the year now probably 😁 ) and was very warm and open, though also very eccentric. But what I found particularly striking about her was her way of speaking. She spoke to me in English, and she had an accent that was the quirkiest possible mix of ridiculously hardcore exaggerated BBC English with an unmistakable hint of North Welsh accent, with rolled «r’s» and strong plosives and the characteristic u’s so it sounded kind of  rough in combination really, but she was also extremely sing-songy and had a sort of inflection that is more South Welsh rather than a North Welsh thing, which added some mildness, and she had a very rich contralto and went up and down in pitch a lot as she spoke. She enunciated all her words extremely clearly and had some really peculiar style of speaking as well, using kind of weird vocab and expressing herself in a funny way, like she kept referring to me as «Bibielle sweeting» all the time. I also had Misha in that place with me and when they came in, he was laying on the bed and she came over to stroke him at some point and was something like: «Misha, oh Misha, such a lavish fur. What a splendid colour! Unrivalled thickness! These gleaming eyes of yours! Verily bewitching!» And  stuff like that and she could talk all the time. In hindsight, I wonder if her awe regarding Misha’s fur was because she thought it would be great for a coat.

   The boy that accompanied her was Polish and I remember that his name was something like Dawid or Dominik though I have no idea where I know it from because she never referred to him by name and he seemed awfully shy and hardly spoke. This Helenor lady turned out to be some kind of seamstress, and she went to the trouble of making several different dresses for me and decided to check if any of them actually suits me only after she was done with making them. And the Dawid/Dominik boy was like her assistant or something, carrying stuff after her, picking up her needles and reminding her things that she forgot to do which seemed to be a very regular occurrence. Like I said he was extremely shy and seemed to be even afraid to speak louder, but at the same Time he didn’t seem to like his job at all and as he stood in the corner and Waited for Helenor to be done with me I heard him sighing theatrically all the time as if this was the most boring day of his life. She, meanwhile, was super enthusiastic about her job, to the point that I guess it must have been a bit infectious, because while I normally hate things like trying on clothes and stuff like that, but this time round I totally didn’t mind. All the dresses that she brought me were in a bit different styles, but they were all extremely elegant and fancy and old-fashioned, like ball gowns, one actually had something that I suppose must have been a crinoline. 

   At some point it finally dawned on me that I had no clue why I’d even need such a ball dress, so I asked Helenor if she knew what all that was about. And she happily explained to me that, basically, the whole idea was hers, and that she herself picked me as the most suitable to attend the ball, and that it was a ball of the fairies and trolls and elves «And you shall be away with the fairies, Bibielle sweeting» – she giggled. – 

   Eventually Helenor decided on a dress that suited me best, and I liked it a lot too. It was long but very airy and light and frilly and made of muslin and Helenor said it was purple. But then she got concerned and said that it’s probably too light and that I’d need to have some warmer outer garment as well and she went on and on how otherwise I might freeze and then she’ll be the one held accountable by the fairies so I assumed it was very likely that I could actually freeze there and she blamed herself in a very dramatic way and despaired over how she hadn’t thought about making me a coat as well. So she ordered Dawid Dominik to fetch all the spare coats that she’d made, I don’t know from where he fetched them and if he really had to carry all the clothes that Helenor has made just in case they could end up being useful. So then Helenor wanted me to try all the coats, and eventually settled on one made of rabbit fur. It was really cute and so soft and fluffy and even had a hood and huge deep pockets, and then she generously offered me her very own rabbit muff, though I didn’t really need it with such huge pockets in the coat.

   She kept oohing and aching about that rabbit coat and how well it looked on me, and went on and on and on about all kinds of things very chaotically in that peculiar accent of hers, and then was suddenly interrupted by the Dawid Dominik boy, who uttered a very loud moan. She turned to him, and he seemed to show her something and point at it and whispered something very agitatedly but I couldn’t understand a word. But Helenor seemed to do, because she got really alarmed or anxious. She quickly grabbed my arm and dragged me into the corner of the room where the boy stood, she switched a light on and they both seemed to inspect something very closely, but I was not sure what it was, which made me feel anxious too. At first I thought they were assessing me up-close like that, and wondered whether perhaps something happened to me suddenly if it caused so much agitation, like, dunno, perhaps I myself suddenly changed into a troll or grown another head or whatever. But the more they looked and debated between themselves in hushed voices and pointed at something the more I started to think that perhaps it’s something in my room. Is there a pile of shit lying somewhere or is it infested by mice or what? I felt more and more uncomfortable not knowing what was going on. And then suddenly Helenor shrieked on what I would assume must have been the top of her lungs: «Jesus Christ help me!» and just disappeared, and Dawid Dominik, dresses, coats and the muff with her. I was speechless and wondered wtf happened, all the more anxiously that I felt I was waking up and I might never know what was the deal with Helenor. Then, as I was already one food in the waking world, someone opened the door of the dream room. It was someone who worked in that place I lived in. She sat on the bed and was like: «So, how did lady Helenor’s visit go? Did she find the right dress for you?» I thought perhaps she’d be able to explain the mystery to me so I told her everything, but she just said something like: «Oh, that’s a pity. But in this case she probably won’t ever come back». I wanted to know why and everything but then I woke up for good and it was 1 PM. 

   I was really amused by that dream once I was able to think clearly, I love it when my brain creates vivid characters like that and then when I wake up I wish they were real. I often try to imagine them again consciously and get them into my Brainworld and I definitely want to do that with Helenor, she’ll be making clothes for Magnus, Nerissa and his children (Magnus and Nerissa are my imaginary sea people who help real people feel happy, and Helenor will fit in their castle perfectly). And where the flip does my brain get such random plot scenarios? It also occurred to me that, while Helenor was so concerned with my not having a coat, she was seemingly oblivious to the fact that I had no appropriate ball shoes. But perhaps fairies dance bare-footed. 😀 

   So, how about you? What made you smile today? Or what made you cry? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   Today’s question of the day is courtesy of Meg: 

  Were you ever afraid of anything as a child that turned out to (probably) not exist? 

   My answer: 

   That’s an interesting question from my perspective, because I guess I could say yes and no. 😀 Let me find Misha before I continue though, I don’t want to get the creeps. 

   Okay, Misha’s here sleeping now. The biggest fear of my childhood, that is still very much a thing, were definitely all things that had something to do with my sensory anxiety. I feared a lot of different sounds, sequences of sounds etc. even some words or clusters of language sounds, that for one reason or another sounded kind of weird to me and didn’t agree with my brain. It could be even a very normal sound for the rest of the world, no horror soundtracks or anything like that required, but to me it would feel super scary and often in a very personally threatening, aggressive way. Like I said, it’s still a thing, although I was even more sensitive to that as a child. When I heard a sound like that, as a small child, I would often start screaming and shrieking, and sometimes would run away from it, or if it scared me totally shitless it happened to me a few times that I would just flop down on the floor right where I stood because the fear made me feel so weak and like someone turned my legs off simultaneously with that sound appearing. 😀 Later on when I started bottling up my feelings and all that I wouldn’t shriek anymore but hearing something creepy in that way typically made me freeze for a little moment, and still does, which is really annoying as you can’t remove yourself from it or anything. Then after I’d hear something like that, it would get stuck in my brain and be particularly intrusive whenever it would be silent around me or whenever I wouldn’t have much to do, like right before sleep or something like that. Simultaneously, my brain would also make up a sort of personification of that sound, like what they looked like more or less, were they a man or a woman, how scary they would be and in what way exactly etc. etc. etc. The most prominent one in my early childhood was a woman whom, for the purpose of this post, we’ll call «Victoria», who was the personification of all the radio jingles from one particular local radio station that doesn’t exist anymore but all their jingles were super scary to me and were all the worse that that  station had an interesting approach to them, playing them mid-songs and mid-everything, so they could pop up literally anytime. My Dad really liked that radio station, and although it wasn’t very easy to get hold of in our specific area, as it was geared more towards West Pomerania, my Dad put a can over the antenna in his car and this way he could receive it with only minimal disruption. I had a bit of an ambivalent relationship with that radio station, because while its jingles were super scary, as a child I was also very much into radio, which manifested itself, among other things, in that I got always super excited when I could get hold of a station that wasn’t normally or easily reachable in our area, and this was definitely the case with that one. As for «Victoria» though, she was a very tall, super strong and rather androgynous woman, who wore loads of clinking jewellery and was very brash and unpredictable and, unlike her equally prominent successor, was very intelligent and constantly found other, different ways of tormenting Bibiel. It feels like she’s always been there because I don’t remember a specific moment when she came to life or when I’d first heard that radio station, so I guess I must have been very young when my mind created her. She was super loud and aggressive. After that radio station morphed into a different one, I never heard that sound again until much later when we tried to do exposure therapy with my therapist, but she still stayed the dominant figure in the murky corner of my Brainworld for quite a while. Then when I was a pre-teen she was replaced by «Ian», which is also not his actual name but obviously I’m not gonna share that (writing this post is already making me feel way too jittery, thank God for Misha 😀 ), although she hasn’t disappeared completely to this day. And «Ian” is mostly a personification of a word, which unfortunately exists in multiple languages because it’s a short word so in each of those languages that I’m aware of it means something else entirely and it can even be a fragment of many other words. Out of all the languages that I know to some degree currently, only Swedish and Norwegian are completely free of «Ian», and English is full of him so it’s absolutely impossible to avoid him while listening to English or speaking English. I once wrote a story on here inspired by my sleep paralysis  which isn’t exactly what I experience but it’s very close and it features an «Ian» who is very much based on mine. Mine has red eyes, a bulky frame, a very deep voice and despite he’s not particularly clever, definitely not as much as Victoria, he can be even more scary and in a way I think it’s precisely because of that, ‘cause he only thinks on a very primitive level. He can be super quiet when he wants, which can be even more menacing than when he yells, and he has disgusting claws. Also I always feel that while «Victoria» was generally an unpleasant person and probably didn’t like anyone, «Ian» has some very particular kind of dislike for Bibiel, I wonder why he hates me so much more than the rest of humans. 

   And whenever I’d be alone or in a quiet space or something like that, I’d be afraid that, at some point, when I will least expect it, the sound that was only being stuck in my brain at a given point, will suddenly manifest itself in front of me in this personified form and do something real scary to me. I couldn’t say what, but I knew it would be super scary. So not only was that scary sound stuck in my brain and I was feeling scared because of that, but I also felt like things could get a lot more scary any second or minute when my fear will actually become the reality and I’ll hear this thing for real all over again and possibly other stuff will happen simultaneously, like, dunno, they’re going to kill me or something. Or I’d be scared that they’re actually already somewhere very close to me and lurking, especially «Ian», just waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves to me. 

   And, in a way, my fears were well-founded, because I got to see all them creepy peeps in my sleep paralysis dreams countless times, which feel as real as anything real. I have no problem with having regular-people nightmares, like, dunno, running away from someone «normal», falling, people dying and whatever other normal nightmares people have. I wake up from them and feel either relieved that it was just a dream, or even laugh at it because it was so vivid and creative and how come my brain creates such suspense-rich plots, even if they’re not pleasant while lasting. But when it’s sleep paralysis that features my actual creeps so realistically, I get really scared of it and it doesn’t go away as soon as I wake up. Especially that I experience a lot of false awakenings in sleep paralysis and I can think that «Phew, at least it’s over now!» And dream about how I told someone about my creepy dream and started my day as I normally would, and then realise that, oops, it’s not quite finished yet, part two is coming. So even though theoretically you always know it when you’ve woken up for good, you can’t help but feel a bit distrustful of your judgement after so many false awakenings in which you’d also thought that you’d woken up for real. So usually when I wake up it takes me a lot of time to recover both physically and mentally. Anyway, when «Victoria» was the dominant creepy character in my sleep paralysis episodes, they would usually start with me having a bath, and my Mum unceremoniously coming in and saying excitedly that I have to get out quickly because someone wants to see me. We both knew who it was, and Mum knew how much I hated «Victoria», but every time she was either oblivious to my protests, or like she felt for me but couldn’t do anything. Then my Mum disappeared and before I even got a chance to get out of the bath, everything would start to spin, with me often banging my head on the bathtub as a result, and I’d hear the dreaded jingle, and «Victoria» would storm in, and other creep peeps following and assisting her. They would put me on something that I can best describe as some sort of mini couch thing made of metal and padded with leather, and strapped me to it so that I laid on it on my back with  arms stretched out behind my head. This couch had wheels and they wheeled me super fast to wherever «Victoria’s» place and spun it a lot n the meantime and obviously in the meantime I heard a lot of creepy jingles. Once we’d get there, «Victoria» would yell into my ears super loud, tickle me under my armpits in a way that wasn’t funny at all but quite threatening, and showed me various mini dreams in which all sorts of scary things happened to my family or me or stuff like that. At some point though, I’d always be able to end the dream if I was quick enough to spot that moment, by making some sort of manoeuvre and saying some weird nonsensical word that I could never recall while awake except that it started with G, lol, all in the dream, not for real, and then everything vanished slowly. I’m not as fortunate with «Ian» though. With «Ian», aside from some details and stuff, I largely described the experience in the short story linked above, aside from stuff that is difficult to describe or that changes every time. «Ian» also visits me in sleep paralysis a lot more frequently than «Victoria» did. «Victoria» still visits me occasionally without «Ian», but when she does these days she’s a lot more malicious than she used to be before «Ian» and often even more malicious than «Ian». 

   So, yeah, I guess it’s hard to say in a way whether my childhood existed or not. You can say that they did, because obviously the sounds did exist, and my sleep paralysis experiences did exist, but their personifications and my perception of threat from the sounds were just imaginary. 

   How about you? 🙂 

TToT (Misha, Traditional Latin Mass, pillows, etc.)

   I thought that today is a good day for writing a gratitude list. I always try to include things that I’m thankful for at least once a week  when writing in my personal diary, but I think I haven’t written a grateful blog post in quite a while and I feel like it today. I’m linking up with Ten Things of Thankful. 

1.    The fact that I’m feeling well physically. My family – that is Sofi, Dad and Olek – have been mildly sick with something and while it isn’t serious, no fever or anything, it seems to be dragging on for quite a while, especially for Sofi. So far, I’ve been spared. Jack the Ripper is visiting me this week and I had two migraines, but overall I’m feeling well. 
2.    Misha spending a lot of time with me, particularly at nights. Misha has recently taken a particular liking for my armchair and sleeps at night either there, or on my bed as usual. I always love it when Misha sleeps with me, his mere presence instantly creates such a pleasant, peaceful, Mishful atmosphere. But this week I’ve been particularly appreciative of it as I’ve had some yucky dreams and night time anxiety, and waking up in such Mishful atmosphere makes things so much easier. 
3.    That I’ll probably soon be able to get a new cable for my scanner. I haven’t been scanning anything for a long time, because it’s such a huge hassle and difficult to do well on my own. But now that I’m attending Traditional Latin Mass, I sorely feel the lack of quality Catholic books in accessible formats, especially older ones, and feel almmost envious of my Mum who keeps buying herself all kinds of such books. They are very useful for prayer, reflection or even simple reading as a form of deepening your faith, and I always have to go looking for things like that on the Internet, which in the end means that what I find won’t necessarily be traditionalist at all. I have always struggled with focusing during prayer, and not having materials to help me out and help my mind go in the right direction makes it even more difficult sometimes. Even the missal that I have in epub is a lot shorter than the one my Mum has as a physical book, and I’m limited here anyway because I can’t just take my Braille-Sense with the missal with me to church like all the other people take their books because that would be super unpractical, I have to read it before the Mass at home. So my Mum has wanted to help me out and scan at least some of her huge collection of these “saintly books” as she collectively calls them for short, but then we couldn’t find the power cable for the scanner absolutely anywhere, and it appears to be such a niche cable that it can’t be replaced with just any average cable. So Mum phoned the company that distributes those scanners and asked if there’s any way of getting another cable or something, and they said that next time they’ll be ordering from the company that produces those scanners which is in the UK, they’ll order a cable for Bibielz as well. So Bibielz can’t wait for it and for all them saintly books. 
4.    Speaking of TLM, I still feel so incredibly grateful to God every time I think about it, that we’ve been able to become part of the Catholic Tradition and attend this beautiful Mass and generally change our lives thanks to this. It will soon be a year since we “converted” as my Mum puts it and Mum and Sofi and me often reflect on how much things have changed for us since then, not even only spiritually but generally in how we think, and laugh at the difference sometimes. 

   My pillows. Yeah I always love my pillows, but today is a good day for being grateful for them because I have new pillowcases. Not for the regular, big pillows, but two smaller ones, one of which I put on top of my big pillow when I sleep and keep my PlexTalk  under it, and the other is for all kinds of unexpected needs and situations and for Misha when he wants to sleep in the bed rather than on it as he usually does. And then I also have three larger, additional pillows just in case, haha, but that’s not relevant here. Anyway, the pillowcases I had on the two, smaller pillows got badly torn as I had them for ages, and before I got some new pillowcases for these  pillows, for some time I slept without an additional pillow and that sucked because I’m totally not used to it – my Dad only sleeps on one, flat pillow and now I’m not surprised he has sleep apnea, I think it wouldn’t take long for me to develop it sleeping like that all the time – so then I got a different pillow, which was bulkier than the one I usually put on top of my regular pillow, so then in turn it felt way too high, and it muffled my PlexTalk quite effectively. So I was really happy and relieved when I finally got brand new pillowcases  and could sleep with my actual pillow. The right or wrong pillow can really make a huge change. 😀 

1.    That I can be helpful for my Mum with her iPhone. I really like it when I can be helpful for people, and while my Mum likes her iPhone and says that it is indeed a lot more comfortable than any of her previous Android phones, she also needs a bit of help or a tip on how to do something with it quite regularly. Even if I don’t know how to do something, it looks like it’s easier to research it for me than for Mum. Perhaps because I always automatically do it in English and there’s more info on most topics in English online. Funnily enough, since last week, she’s been saying that perhaps she’d like to buy herself an Apple Watch, because it would make it easier for her to take calls when out and about and she hopes it would be better for measuring how many kilometres she runs and bikes. I think it’s funny at what pace we’re becoming the Apple family. 😀 I am very seriously planning to sway Dad to the Apple camp by the end of next year as well, just cus why not? Olek will be all alone with a Samsung. 😀 I know it’s beyond my abilities to convince Olek as his choice is fully conscious and informed, and because of that I wouldn’t even want to change it as it wouldn’t make too much sense. I already told Dad how Apple has CarPlay and that seems to have appealed to him as a lorry driver. 
2.    doing relatively well mentally. July and August were awful for me with loads of what I call sensory anxiety for the purpose of this blog, which was going up and downn a lot and which was mostly caused by an unusual amount of sleep paralysis episodes that I had at that time and that they also were quite unusually intense and long, so that things felt quite out of control and I had a hard time functioning normally. Lately things have calmed down significantly and for long enough that I think I can say this month has been better, even despite horrid dreams and anxiety at night afterwards that I had earlier this week. 
3.    Lots of yummy fruit. We still have raspberries in our garden! They haven’t been very sweet this year, but are still good, and it’s always nice to have home-grown raspberries rather than have to buy them from someone/somewhere else. We also have loads of pears, more than we can eat, in fact, so Mum is making some sort of mousse from themm or something. We also have a lot of apples (as befits the Apple family lol). And even blueberries, though these aren’t home-grown, Mum just bought a lot of them a while back to freeze. So we eat a lot of fruits and it’s really nice that we can do it. 
4.    Chilly weather, which is chilly and cosy enough for me to be able to wear my fluffy overalls in the evenings again. For me that always means that autumn has properly started. 😀 
5.    My language progress. It hasn’t felt like anything huge, but I’m always grateful even for a very little bit that my brain absorbs. Also what I feel particularly happy about, and what is particularly tangible for me, is that because of my Norwegian learning, I can feel my Swedish strengthening significantly as well. I was kind of worried it would be the oppposite and that I’d end up having a jumble of the two and would regret my silly out-of-the-blue affair with Norwegian. I’m so glad that it’s not the case, as well as that, for that matter, my relationship with Norwegian has definitely become a steady one by now, as we’ve been together for over a year now. 

   How about you, lovely people? What are you grateful for this week? How has it been for you overall? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   What’s on your mind right now? 

   My answer: 

   Ugh, nothing specific really. Mostly my mind feels muffled and jumbled because I’ve been having a yucky headache since about noon. It’s not quite a migraine I guess, or not yet though I hope that if it hasn’t developed into one by now then it won’t at all, but still it’s pretty bad, and then on top of that I’ve been having a weird earache for some reason since yesterday, which seems totally random because I’d never really had earaches or ear infections or anything like that. I don’t even think this is due to an infection because it doesn’t affect my hearing and other than that and the headache I’m feeling okay, plus I don’t see how I would have gotten it and why, but it’s annoying nonetheless. It isn’t even like a constant earache but more like brief, sharp pain every few minutes so it actually feels more like a nerve thing or something. I slept for three hours or so thinking it would help but it didn’t really do much, in a way it actually only made things worse because I got really bad sleep paralysis. I woke up about two hours ago or so and am still processing and recovering from those dreams. Luckily I don’t even remember much but still it always leaves a shitty feeling in my brain, and I do remember one detail very clearly, how “Ian” (which is how I publicly call my dream “friend) roared at me that “Your mum crashed into a fucking ditch and died!” (except instead of the actual word that you’d normally use to talk about a human dying he used the one that you use for animals in Polish). He says a lot of bullshit like that and I sometimes think I should write down all his threats, prophecies and stuff to see if any will ever come true, but even though few or none do, he can still be very convincing. My Mum is in Germany on a camper trip with Dad, and I wondered why he said it about Mum but not Dad. Anyway, after I eventually woke up, I had to call Mum and make sure that she was okay and she was.

   Also Misha’s on my mind. He’s been a real pain ever since Mum has left. Actually I’m not sure why we’ve only figured it out this year but Misha’s insanely attached to Mum. I mean we’ve always known that she is his favourite person and he often follows her around the house or watches TV with her and stuff like that, but Mum always said it’s simply because she is his main feeder so he associates her with food. But it doesn’t seem to be the case because he obviously still gets food  from Sofi, , and he keeps crying so so much. And it’s always the case when my parents go on trips, and he gets so whiney and constantly wants something, either food or water or to pet him in the middle of the night while he sprawls himself out in the corridor. I used to think that Sofi doesn’t feed him enough, because in previous years she didn’t feed him often enough or change his water regularly, but it seems like Sofi’s a bit better about it now and he has more than enough food if he manages to vomit it fairly regularly. He constantly wants his snacks as well and can’t sleep normally through the night and keeps moaning. This is very different to how he cries when he wants out, it’s a bit guttural like his happy “hhrrru?” Except more resigned and lower-pitched, and he keeps repeating it over and over and over and over and over again. As soon as Mum comes back, he goes back to normal and is very affectionate with her. So I wonder if it wouldn’t actually be better for him if he went along with my parents. It would sure also be super stressful for him, but perhaps less than being away from mummy. My Dad always calls him Mama’s boy now. Last night Misha kept waking us up and we both felt like doing something nasty to him, so Mum said we should put him in the cellar/laundry room for the night and leave him some food and water there and that’s what we’ll probably do because he likes being there, and associates the place with Mum because he often accompanies her there when she’s ironing and Sofi says she’ll let Jocky in there as well so Misha will have someone to listen to his Mummy woes and Jocky will be able to cool off ‘cause it’s been frying outside for the last few days. For that reason I’m really glad that they’re coming back tomorrow, but then on Monday they go on another trip, this time one that my gran is organising for pensioners from her town. My parents are neither pensioners, nor from her town, but since she is the boss in their local pensioners group and they had some free spots with no local pensioners apparently willing to fill them in, they’re able to join in and will be going to Prague. We decided that Mum is going to give Misha   his favourite pill (Prozac) from Saturday to Monday (but smaller dose than what the vet had originally recommended because we don’t necessarily want him completely zonked all over again especially while Mum wouldn’t be around) and maybe that will calm him down a bit until she’s back. 

   I’m also thinking what we should eat for dinner with Sofi, whether we should order something and if so what, or perhaps just keep it simple and have sandwiches or something, or Sofi said in the morning that she wanted to do some sort of pasta but she’s been out with a friend so when she comes back I think she’ll be hungry but not necessarily into making it. And I’m thinking whether I myself actually want anything for dinner at all given how I’m feeling. I don’t know about other people but for me a headache, never mind if it’s a migraine or more low-key, is always accompanied by more or less intense nausea so food isn’t really something I’d dream about then. But on the other hand I also didn’t really eat much at all today so perhaps I should eat something. How about you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   What is something that drastically improved your mental health? 

   My answer: 

   Well, I could focus on several different things, as there have been many things that I’ve found helpful for my mental health over the years, some to a significant extent. But the most important one I think, it’s not something but someone. It’s Misha. Misha has helped me so much. In a way, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to form such a very strong bond with anyone as I have with Misha. This has been a very interesting experience, and also a very healing one, to feel so very strongly about someone and at the same time not experience any sort of anxiety or insecurity around such relationship, unlike what has been the case with all kinds of my closer human relationships. Well, I am scared of Misha dying and I suppose that’s quite out of proportion, but that’s an unavoidable part and risk of all relationships really. Other than that, I feel very safe in my relationship with Misha, and I want him to feel the same. I also feel kind of less lonely with Misha. I’ve never really been one to complain about loneliness, I know how to cope with your typical loneliness and it’s not much of a problem for me. But the sort of loneliness that I experience and struggle with more strongly isn’t something that being around others can help with a lot, in fact often it feels even stronger when I’m around other people because it can sometimes be fuelled by stuff like feelings of inadequacy. It’s a strong, gnawing feeling that’s really difficult to get rid of in any way, something that comes from within rather than from being alone and feeling sad or frustrated or bored in this situation. And, well, Misha hasn’t magically freed me from this, but when I look back at the time when I didn’t have him, it’s really clear that having him has made some difference in this aspect. I find Misha’s presence especially comforting at night when I’m struggling with this. He doesn’t sleep with me every night, but he will usually come of his own accord if I really really need him. His presence is also very comforting for me in dealing with these lonely feelings when I can have him close by when there are a lot of people. Perhaps because Misha doesn’t like peopling very much either, so I know he feels similarly and this makes me feel less alone and like I have someone who gets me, and someone who is, like me, though for totally different reasons, perceived as different from the rest of the individuals socialising in a given situation, so that we are both outside. Misha is outside and different because he’s a cat, so he can’t speak human, understands things differently and all that jazz, for many people from extended family he’s even weird for a cat because he’s apparently very different from all the cats they know who purr nice and loud and aren’t scared of every slight movement or something being placed somewhere else than it usually is and come obediently when you call something like pussy or kitty kitty whereas you have to call Mish Mish for Misha because that’s what we’ve taught him, and even then he’ll come when he wants, though personally I suppose the latter is what most cats do. I am outside and different because I can’t do peopling like most people expect their fellow people to be able to do it, I am blind, which makes a huge difference for a lot of people in how they see you, plus it means I am outside of a large portion of their non-verbal communication and my perception of things is quite different, just as it is the case with Misha. I can’t always have Misha close to me while peopling, even when we’re peopling at our house, because Misha obviously doesn’t care about people’s rules and won’t necessarily want to be there with me, or if he does, it’s usually for a very short time, unless there’s yummy food and people provide him with the kind of attention that he likes. But he’ll often be close to me at the start of various family gatherings, so that I can often come into the room with Misha on my shoulder, hearing his purr. It’s funny, actually, because this is the only situation when he sits on my shoulder and many people find it impressive like my grandad thinks we must have some miraculous connection if I can go around carrying him on my shoulder like that. 😀 This way, people’s attention focuses on Misha, whereas I feel calmer having him close to me. Then after a while he’ll usually sneak out to the kitchen or go up on the radiator into his basket, and then when my brain battery is low and I go to my room, he’ll always follow me and we’ll recharge together, as he tends to find all the people noise and the unwanted kind of attention especially from children quite overwhelming and needs a lot of sleep.

   When I’m having a particularly hard time due to depression, Misha can sometimes be the only thing that will motivate me to get out of bed really. I don’t know how I did it before Misha! When I’m not overly depressed, I really enjoy waking up to Misha’s sweet “Hhrrru?” Which is how he greets people. I love talking to him first thing in the morning, giving him his food and cuddling him for a while if he’s up to it. It’s really the best start for the day you could imagine. Some people are surprised that I don’t mind and even want to sleep with him and then have to let him out of my room in the morning at such insane hours as 3 AM sometimes, hardly any later than 6 AM, my Mum says it’s like having a baby. Perhaps it is, but I really don’t mind getting up and letting him out, and unlike with a baby, I can go right back to bed if I want and sleep to my brain’s content or even longer, or I can let him out without actually waking up, just on autopilot. 

   But most of all I think Misha has helped me with anxiety. Especially the more panicky/acute types of anxiety like my typical sensory anxiety aka sound/silence anxiety. It is such a relief having Misha at home in this respect. It doesn’t solve the problem completely, though I really doubt there’s anything that can always do it with 100% effectivity but Misha helps to varying extent every single time. I think this type of anxiety that I have must work similarly to fear of the dark that many young children experience, which I base on that I believe that silence and darkness are similar phenomena in a way, and that Sofi, who still deals with fear of the dark a lot even though she’s a teenager, seems to have a lot of similar experiences around it, though that could also be of course due to that we’re sisters and experience some things similarly. Anyways, while in general I’d say Sofi’s fear is thankfully milder than mine because she only experiences it at night, not in all kinds of dark conditions, and nothing else triggers it other than darkness at night, there’s one thing in which I really feel for Sofi regarding her anxiety. Misha doesn’t help her at all. In fact sometimes he even adds to her discomfort because he can be so quiet and creep her out if he’s in her room and she can’t see him. And I think that really sucks. For me, there are times when Misha can make a world of difference and allow me to fall asleep at all or alleviate my anxiety enough that I don’t need my PRN anxiety medication. I feel a lot safer when I’m at home with Misha vs just on my own. Even when he’s not directly in the same room as myself can sometimes make a glimmer of difference, knowing that he still is somewhere in the house. Sometimes when some creepy sound or a sleep paralysis episode triggers this type of anxiety for me bad enough, I have trouble with such seemingly unrelated things like being in the bathroom, whether as in in the loo, or showering. It’s really difficult to explain the connectioon and the whole sensory anxiety thing in general, but when I’m in this particular freak out mode it’s like everything seems murkily scary to me, it’s a really weird experience to describe with lots of different dimensions to it I’d say. But in such situations, having Misha with me in the bathroom, laying on the radiator while I’m showering, can help a little, or in the latter stages of the freakout phase quite a lot. We have a radio in the bathroom but it never helps half as much as Misha does when the world goes all creepy. Speaking of sleep paralysis, Misha can help that too, though of course for that to be possible, he has to be in the room with me. He has frequently gotten me out of a beginning sleep paralysis dream in the morning by frantically crying, hhrrru?’ing and scratching the door to let him out. I always thought it’s just a coincidence that he frequently happens to do that right when I’m floating away, but then I had a nap a few times during the day with Misha in my room. I don’t like taking naps because they dysregulate myy sleep cycle even further than it normally is and because they’re more likely to start or end with sleep paralysis, so I only nap if I really have to or if it just happens involuntarily while I lay on the bed for a while with Misha and we both drift off. Well, and I have happened to drift off to sleep paralysis in the middle of the day with Misha either next to me or at my feet, and every single of those times I woke up feeling Misha tickling my foot with his paw, as he sometimes does playfully. Now I don’t know whether Misha has some extreme superpower of sensing sleep paralysis in humans which even fellow humans are typically unable to figure out and think you’re just sleeping heavily, or perhaps he simply saw me wriggling my toes, as people sometimes do in their sleep, and which I do in sleep paralysis if I am able to because I discovered that it can slow down the initial floating/drifting and alleviate this sensation which I really hate, and if I wriggle them to a specific side it lets me float in a specific direction rather than being aimlessly thrown around dreamland until I reach the one and only right destination, and sometimes even the right toe move at the right moment lets me wake up. Misha, like most cats I presume, likes things that move, and he likes to make out with people’s legs whenever he’s only allowed, which is never but he never loses hope and perhaps he just thought my toe wriggling was an invitation and the tickling was some sort of foreplay. Regardless though, I’m glad that as it seems Misha is able to wake me up from this at the right moment before everything starts for good. It’s just quite shitty that he rarely is there when this is happening. 

   How about you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

What’s your biggest fear?

My answer:

I have such an abundance of fears that it’s hard to say which one is biggest. Social anxiety’s definitely huge, but it depends on a lot of things and sometimes it’s less scary than others, or more manageable anyway, for no apparent reason. Then there’s this thing I call sensory anxiety, which I’ve generally gotten used to live with and it can also vary immensely in intensity, but it can be absolutely creepifying at times. My sensory anxiety is kind of connected with sleep paralysis, so that counts in here too. What’s particularly scary is this sleep paralysis/sensory anxiety “friend” of mine, known as “Ian” on this blog, about whom I wrote a short story on here, but I don’t tell his real name to anyone. He’s extremely scary and I always have a sick conviction at the back of my brain that he’s actually real and that some day I’ll get to experience his realness properly. As for actually recognised specific phobias, out of those that I’ve had emetophobia (fear of vomit) has always been the worst, though it’s not nearly as scary as it used to be for me in the past, most of the time anyway. Another thing that I have a fair bit of fear around is all things neurodegenerative, the possibility that I could end up having a neurodegenerative disease at some point, like Alzheimer’s (well, it doesn’t have to necessarily be a neurodegenerative disease, a TBI would be scary too but neurodegenerative diseases sound like something that’s particularly difficult to have any control over), and lose my brains as a result. My brains are like my fortress or something, so it would be a hopeless situation for me. And while usually it feels like vomit is scarier because it happens to more people and is more likely to happen, plus I’m also scared of it happening to anyone else, not just me, brain damage, of whatever nature, isn’t something that happens to everyone and it doesn’t seem like I’m at a particularly high risk in any way, as there hasn’t been anyone in my family as far as I know with this sort of thing. Yet on the other hand the brain damage stuff has way longer and nastier consequences. So I can’t say which one is scarier.

How about your fear? 🙂

Question of the day.

If you could take a pill every day that perfectly replicated a good night’s sleep – made you feel physically refreshed and chemically balanced, like a real sleep – would you take it every day? What would you do with all that newly acquired time?

My answer:

I probably wouldn’t want to take it every day, because I love my sleep and dreaming and all that, but, if that was an option to do so, I’d probably take it once in a while. Sometimes I could use a longer day, to be able to squeeze more things in. Not because I’m that busy on a typical day, I just have a lot of ideas and things that I’m into, while at the same time being quite disorganised in general so having more time for things would sometimes be helpful. Also sometimes I don’t like sleep, like when I have a lot of yucky dreams or sleep paralysis or something, then I have a sort of mild fear of sleep until things go back to more normal. I could use such a sleep pill in such situations and just not have to bother with sleeping. Other times, sleep is just not refreshing or chemically balancing, so I’d take the pill after waking up to be more functional. Or when I’m a zombie and haven’t slept at all the night before. Or if I just wouldn’t feel like sleeping, wouldn’t be sleepy at all. That would be a fabulous invention if we had such a pill. Only I’m fairly sure that since it would have such a major effect on one’s overall state and affect the brain, which is still quite an unknown territory for us, it would probably come with its fair share of side effects and possibly addiction or some sleep dysregulation. Wouldn’t be surprised at all.

How about you? And what do you think about this idea? Would such a pill work out, if it was a real possibility? 🙂

Question of the day.

If you wake up at 3 AM and can’t fall back asleep, what do you do?

My answer:

As someone with quite erratic sleep-wake cycle which shifts a lot, mostly due to the fact that I have no light perception, I end up in such a situation quite often. Unlike a lot of people who struggle with sleep problems and disorders though, it’s not a huge source of frustration for me. Largely because it’s always been like this, and now I’m in a very comfortable life situation where I am in charge of my own time so everything is very flexible, I can sleep in if I need to, I can go to sleep very early if I was up all night, or I can have a more low-key day if I’m a zombie running on no sleep. Having lived in an exactly opposite way most of my life, where I did have to live a very structured life and having to fit in my constantly more or less “jet-lagged” into it, I appreciate this luxury all the more. So it’s not a big deal for me usually if I can’t sleep at 3 AM or wake up at that time.

I do lots of different things if I can’t sleep at night, I just take it as an extra amount of time that I can do something interesting with. Sometimes, when I’m in a phase when I don’t need a lot of sleep and can go on four hours or so and feel quite rested for a few days, I’m feeling quite energised at night and put my energy into something creative. Generally, regardless of my energy levels, I feel that I’m often a lot more creative and deep-thinking at night and come up with a lot of interesting ideas. 😀 So I’ll do some journaling, sometimes write a short story or try to write something more in my huge, neverending Jack Hamilton novel which I’ve been writing since like fourth grade and Jack Hamilton has been a great friend of mine and especially on sleepless nights, my Mum says that he’s like an old dog who’s barely alive but you’re too attached to him to put him down. I rarely add something more to that these days because I don’t need Jack as much as I used to as a teenager and we both have changed a lot, but I do not want to put a clear end to this whole thing, so these days if I write something more to it it’s usually just a little bit. He’s going to be celebrating his 100th birthday quite soon, I believe. Other times, I’ll just listen to some music and daydream (wait, nightdream) or go into my Brainworld, as I’ve always been an avid paracosmist (I’ve been a paracosmist my entire life and only recently learned about the existence of this word 😀 ).

If I’m less creatively inclined, I’ll just read or listen to music, often without even getting out of bed, although if I can’t fall back asleep for longer than an hour I usually get up because if I fall back asleep after such longer but still not very long time, I have almost guaranteed sleep paralysis and while people have varying attitudes towards it, for me it’s always been extremely scary because it features stuff I’m scared of in real life and sometimes one relatively short episode of sleep paralysis can affect me for a few days and make me super anxious.

Since we’ve got Misha, I’m often not the only one who isn’t asleep at 3 AM in this house. Misha’s sleep cycle is also totally different than the cycles of the peeps in here, so he’ll also often have loads of energy in the middle of the night, running wildly around the living room or playing with his glass balls. If that is the case, I’ll often bring him up to my room, as here his play won’t wake up anyone else, and we’ll play together.

Other times, I just go online and write with people or something, or play BitLife, ever since I’ve got my iPhone, because yes, I still play it quite a lot. Or just start my day properly, get dressed, eat something and do whatever I was going to do in the day anyway.

How about you? Does such a scenario often take place in your life? 🙂

The sounds of animals. #SOCS

It’s Monday but I thought it would be fun to join in with

Stream Of Consciousness Saturday

today anyway. Last Saturday, Linda’s prompt for us was to write about the sounds that animals make and how we experience them.

Well, quite obviously I think, the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking of the sounds of animals in general, are feline sounds, more exactly the sounds that Misha makes. I find them soooooo soothing and relaxing. It’s pure bliss to me to be very close to Misha so that I can hear all the sounds of his. I generally love to hear cats purring (who doesn’t?), it’s a cute sound, but Misha’s purr is special. Not only because Misha is mine and I love Misha, but also because Misha’s purr is very quiet. An average cat will start purring before you even stroke him, and so loudly that sometimes even people on the other side of the room or even next door can hear it. Cats are very generous in that respect. Well, not Misha. His purrs are for VIP’s only, and even more often, he purrs just for himself. As you probably know if you’ve been around here for a while and read some of my posts about Misha or Misha’s posts, Misha is very fearful, rather solitary and not particularly vocal. It’s not like he’s selfish, like a lot of people think. He does want closeness, and cuddles and all that, but, first, it has to be on his conditions – when and where and how long he wants – and second, he is also afraid of touch and sudden movement and often it is very difficult for him to overcome this fear, though there are better days and worse, I’m not entirely sure what exactly it depends on, but probably just like with us humans – sometimes we’re cheerful, sometimes we’re sad, sometimes we’re anxious, sometimes we want to be alone, and sometimes with others, and sometimes we want to have fun and play. – Anyway, all those traits of Misha probably contribute to the fact that his purrs are usually very, very quiet. Like, most of the time you’d have to literally put your ear very near him to hear it, so usually you are more likely to feel his purr and the vibrations in his throat, rather than hear it. My Mum claims that Misha must have something wrong with his throat or larynx because it is not normal, and I’ve always thought it’s just the way he is and has nothing to do with his larynx. However, recently I’ve been thinking more about it because I’ve noticed that Misha frequently chokes a bit when eating. Not very badly, just a little bit. I suppose it’s not something new but just something that I hadn’t noticed previously. So that could be either through some larynx issues indeed, or perhaps because Misha tends to eat very quickly and a bit as if he supposed that someone is going to take the food away from him any time suddenly or do something scary so that he’ll have to run away immediately. Really sometimes you could think he’s got some bad trauma like a lot of shelter cats do.

We humans often think that when a cat purrs, it must be happy and content. Well, I’m no expert at felines, though I have observed Misha and read a lot about cats and their behaviour, and specifically purring, and it seems to be a myth. I think I’ve written on that previously, but I’ll say that here too. Cats can also purr when feeling anxious, or in pain, to soothe themselves in a variety of situations, and probably in several other instances which I don’t remember. The anxious bit is certainly true for Misha! I’ve often heard, or felt, that he purrs when he’s afraid or just tense and nervous. As I said, he frequently purrs just for himself, for example in his bed, before falling asleep, when no one is petting him or paying particularly much attention to him. I always find it so cute, it’s like a child would sing himself to sleep. I think it soothes him.

Apart from purring, cats of course make a lot of other noises. Misha hasn’t spoilt us with a particularly wide range of them, but he’s definitely capable of it, just chooses not to do it very frequently. He can be just as expressive with all the “hhrrru’s?” and meows he makes as we can be with our languages and tones of voice, which makes him an excellent manipulator! Some of his sounds alone will break your heart and fill you with overwhelming sadness, others will make you annoyed and irritated at him even though he didn’t do anything other than meow or hhrrru? because it sounds like he’s screaming at you, others will make you feel lighter and happier and like it’s going to be a very beautiful day, and some will make you rush for Mish ice-cream and sausages urgently on autopilot. There are also such that will let you know that poo is on its way (when Misha is for example closed somewhere and can’t go to the loo) or that he’s going to vomit (this is probably the only Mish sound I really dislike, or that sun is shining so beautifully that Mishka would like to go out just for a little while, or that the fun has gone one step too far and Misha has transformed into a real predator.

When Misha sleeps in my room and doesn’t feel too anxious, I love to sit or lay very close to him, and listen to his purr, breath, heartbeat and his tummy gurgles. It’s better than any kind of music or relaxing sounds we could ever create! Especially Misha’s breath is something I love, and, again, it’s not always easy to hear well even when you’re relatively close. A lot of the time, especially when he isn’t purring, his breath is very similar to that of a baby.

Another Mish sound I truly love is the sound of little Mish paws on a carpet when he’s running or walking quickly, it’s a very quiet sound but so delightful.

There are sounds that cats make though that I am not a big fan of, especially when it comes to wild cats. When I was a small child and lived in the country, we had lots of wild cats on our backyard. Some got used to people and were very cuddly, others not, but they were both fighting and copulating frequently at nights, and I hated hearing that. It was scary! Especially when I was very small and had no idea what those sounds were! Just imagine it – everyone’s asleep, you’re in bed and suddenly you hear moaning and howling and lots of other creepy sounds, as if some haunted or long condemned individuals were wandering around out there. – 😀 My sensory anxiety always gets way more nasty when I don’t know the source of a sound, which I guess is not particularly strange as we’re always more likely to be scared of unknown stimuli especially when our brains are going to see them as a danger anyway. Now that I know what sounds cats make sometimes, they no longer provoke my sensory anxiety even if they are a little creepy sometimes. Here we also have a lot of wild cats, though Jocky keeps them at a distance most of the time. When we didn’t have Jocky though, there were loads of them and they made lots of noise as well, but that sounded more like extremely distressed babies crying or shrieking. 😀

We also had a fox farm in the neighbourhood for a while which was awful. My Mum has extremely sensitive sense of smell – she says she could work as a police dog 😀 – and it was always particularly unpleasant for her when the stinky smell of foxes would fill the air after the rain for example. What I hated the most though, were the sounds they were making sometimes. Before we moved here, I had no idea what sounds, if any, foxes could make, and the first time I heard that was very unpleasant. Not only because their barking is really unpleasant I think rather objectively, but also because… if any of you had read my short story about sleep paralysis called

“Help!”

, then perhaps you remember the guy called Ian, who was the main character’s sleep abuser. Well, for some reason, my “Ian” sometimes makes eerily similar sounds, and has had since I know him, that is since pretty much forever, dunno, maybe he has some fox relatives or whatever. So you can imagine that it scared me out of my pants.

Which animals sounds do you like or find soothing? Are there any that you particularly dislike? 🙂

 

Working On Us – sleep disorders.

It’s week #13 of Beckie’s mental health prompts series Working On Us at

Beckie’s Mental Mess.

The topic for this week is sleep, insomnia and other sleep disorders. Here are the questions for prompt #1.

 

1. Have you, or do you suffer from sleep disorders? – I have a lot of sleep issues, which are both related to my mental health difficulties as well as the fact that I don’t see the light so my sleep cycle is just messed up. They change with time. Just as I sleep at different times and my sleep schedule and habits change, so do my sleep related problems. Most of the time I struggle with insomnia more or less. It is my normal to lay in bed for an hour or longer before I fall asleep. Sometimes I wake super early, like 3-5 AM and after going to sleep at about midnight. Luckily it’s not as often as it used to be for me that I have, as I call them “Zombie days” – a day after a night of no sleep at all. – Sometimes my insomnia is clearly due to anxiety or stress and I just overthink everything and worry about every single thing and ruminate, it’s gotten worse recently, but sometimes it’s like my inner clock just isn’t set on sleeping whatsoever and I may even feel a bit hyperactive, playing with Misha at 2 AM and not feeling even slightly tired, and then sleep until noon or so. Then I have times when I sleep a lot, 12-13 hours and usually miss a great chunk of the day as a result. Sometimes it just comes on its own, and then I hate it, because I don’t want to sleep my life through like that, and feel lazy and lousy, plus then it’s usually not the best kind of sleep, filled with bad dreams and such. But sometimes I do that on purpose because I’m so depressed and sleep is way more interesting than the reality. I suppose I might have non 24 hour sleep-wake disorder (what a grossly long name) which is very common among the blind, but I haven’t ever heard about it being diagnosed in Poland so I guess people don’t know much, and while I know there is medication for that in other countries, I couldn’t find the evidence that it is used over here, so I don’t see the point in seeking a diagnosis. I have very vivid dreams, which can be an incredible gift and a really great thing, I love my good vivid dreams, but it can just as well be something close to a curse, because my nasty vivid dreams are super creepy, as if I had a personalised horror movie production studio in my brain, with horrors right just for me. 😀 I’ve read that there was some Danish study which revealed that apparently blind people have nightmares more often than sighted people do, which would make sense from what I’ve heard from many blind people. If you have vivid dreams things get just a bit more intense. And on top of that I am one of the lucky ones who regularly struggle with sleep paralysis. And that’s probably the biggest sleep related problem for me. There is also my silence anxiety and sounds anxiety involved, which makes sleep often difficult. I won’t get into detailed descriptions of what it is for me but, very shortly, I just don’t do complete silence, so I need to have some quiet music in the background, and Misha, and it always works, but to a very varying degree.
2. Have you sought treatment for your sleep disorders? – I had a point in my life where I thought I was unable to take this sleep paralysis thing any longer, I was so fed up and constantly scared and I just lost my patience with it. It’s something that I’ve lived my whole life with but suddenly I had that “why me?” crisis. And then I went to the neurologist looking for some help, also because I wasn’t perfectly sure it was sleep paralysis, because some things in it are different for me than they are for most people whose stories I read. She confirmed that and gave me some tips on things that I could do myself to alleviate it, and told me that there’s no medication that would be 100% working for it, but that she could put me on some antidepressant that is said to help with that, though it’s not certain how effective it is and it’s mostly prescribed for people with narcolepsy who additionally suffer from sleep paralysis. Since it’s not clear if it actually works, I said I’d rather try dealing with it without medication first. I was also offered antidepressants by the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with dysthymia but I’m honestly pretty scared of some of the side effects like gaining weight. I’m currently underweight actually and could probably put some on just to stop my Mum’s grumbling and make buying clothes less tricky and look healthier, but I wouldn’t like that to happen because of taking medication. And so far I am managing with just anti-anxiety meds. I’ve learnt over the years some tricks to get out of sleep paralysis or to prevent it, but it doesn’t work all the time. Sooner or later it will always catch me.
3. Have you ever had a sleep study on you, and if so, what was recommended? – No. I would kind of like have one though, and my Mum says I should, because, in her opinion, my sleep is weird and I should get it checked out if not because of any concerns, then at least out of curiosity. And yeah, it’s interesting, I am curious, though I don’t know if my sleep is objectively that much of a phenomenon, I guess not, my Mum is just very typical. I’ve never had an opportunity though, and I don’t think there is any sleep clinic in the area or anything like that, I don’t know anyone in person who’d have a sleep study done.
4. Has your doctor prescribed medication for your sleep disorder, if so, what has worked for you? – Not directly for sleep, mostly for anxiety, but that has affected sleep too. I took Hydroxyzine for a while as a child, and then my psychiatrist put me on it again when I was 17 and got the reactive depression diagnosis and told her about the anxiety I was having. I’ve always heard good opinions about Hydroxyzine and that it works well for people, that it’s such a safe medication and all but it wasn’t so for me. It was making me extremely groggy, I would be just switched off and away from the world for hours and hours and hours, the only thing I could do on it was sleeping, and then I would wake up hungover and with a headache. Perhaps it was because I hate being groggy and foggy and not in control and thus my anxiety got worse, but in any case, I really didn’t feel like it was working for my anxiety at all. The only times when I have found Hydroxyzine very helpful, life-saving almost, have been when I felt really depressed, only feeling like sleeping, or very unstable and overwhelmed, like last year after the first of my final exams when I was super triggered I just slept the whole night and most of the day away on Hydroxyzine afterwards, worked the trigger through while sleeping and woke up (almost) a new person, (almost) ready to face another final exam. Hydroxyzine is also an antiemetic, so when my emetophobia is through the roof and for a very sound reason – like a norovirus raging in the house – it helps too. And I don’t mind sleeping norovirus invasions through at all. I still have it and can take it when I need but that’s rarely. I don’t see my psychiatrist regularly, so after some time I went to my GP with my anxiety problems and told him the whole Hydroxyzine and anxiety and messed up sleep story, and he put me on Afobam, which as I heard later from my psychiatrist is more suitable as a sleep med for those people who tend to wake up a lot rather than those who can’t fall asleep, as is more often the case with me, but it works great for me so I’m still on it. The thing is, it’s highly addictive so I am only taking it on as needed basis. That is, when my anxiety is really severe or when I want to regulate my sleep cycle at least for a while or when I just know I won’t sleep and I have to sleep. If I need it for a few days in a row I take only a half of it. That’s not a perfect solution definitely, but at least when I take it, it works. I often do feel groggy after it and sleep for a long time, but I don’t feel hungover like after the Hydroxyzine and it noticeably improves my sleep quality, I wake up refreshed and well-rested most of the time.
5. Have you ever tried home remedies to alleviate your sleep disorders? – Loads of herbal-based supplements and some other OTC products that worked just as well as candy, melissa tea which apparently is placebo, melissa essential oil which apparently works very well but not for me, smelling lavender which probably didn’t work because my sense of smell doesn’t work too well either haha, CBD oil which I am still trying but with no great results, I guess the concentration is too low or something, I’d like to believe that it works, niacin, which I really tried supplementing and wanted to but as high doses as they say that you should take for mental health were not doable with me because those pills are really big and I have a bit of a trouble swallowing big pills, let alone five or more at a time, and even when I broke them into halves or thirds it was still tricky to swallow such amount of pills in one go, it was crazy. 😀 I was able to notice some small improvement on it but I just couldn’t continue this way, my life would evolve around swallowing niacin three times a day and dosing it the right way, and then they say for it to work you need to take other stuff too, because it changes the absorption of vitamin C, and the niacin itself is absorbed better with something else. Ugh no thanks, my life is way more interesting without all that, and what if that cocktail wouldn’t work? All my efforts would be wasted! 😀 Also, I am trying out progesterone cream which also my Mum is using, which has directly nothing to do with sleep obviously but my Mum, being a great lifestyle geek has read loads of material on how helpful progesterone supplementation can be for women and also how much of an effect hormonal imbalance can have on mental health, and my hormones aren’t balanced even just because I have hypopituitarism. My Mum says it works miracles for her, though I guess for her it’s a bit different since she’s going through menopause so that must be rather obvious. I can’t say much on that cream though because I’m only using it since July, and it needs some time to have noticeable effects. What helps me is Misha, listening to music, reading before sleep, doing some visualisation exercises, prayer, having my feet warm – they’re usually cold so I like having hotwater bottle and when it’s cold outside I won’t fall asleep without it ever 😀 – trying to implement some sleep routine, though for me that’s really really difficult and never stuck for long, I am trying though, so I hope that counts and makes it better than it would be without it. Doing something relaxing always helps, whatever I find relaxing at the time. Oh, I nearly forgot, I also had numerous trials and errors – more of the latter – with melatonin, which at first didn’t work, and then every time I got back to it I had very nasty nightmares every night I was on it. I’ve heard that could be transient, but no one told me how long that transience should last and every time it felt like a bit too long to keep trying and waiting so I don’t think I ever will again. With my sleep paralysis, good sleep hygiene and some sort of a routine/schedule helps. I can’t always have the latter, but what I’ve found helpful is not napping, though I was never an enthusiast of naps at all, they just make more chaos. No napping, and no laying in bed awake in the morning for ages, as I carelessly used to do especially at weekends. Suddenly, after a while I become surprisingly, extremely sleepy again and I don’t even notice when it sucks me in. Also, generally I know I need to avoid such things like waking up and then going back to sleep after a while, because that very often brings sleep paralysis. But I never know how long that while should be, seems like even half an hour break between one sleep and another at night is too much and is risky, so if I want to avoid sleep paralysis I should just get up and start to live. Of course, that’s not always practical, because even if I wake up at night I may still feel like I need more sleep, or will be very tired during the day if I’d just wake up and start my day in the middle of the night, so sometimes I do this, but sometimes I don’t. The neurologist told me that sleeping on your right side helps with sleep paralysis. I laughed at it internally and thought it must be some superstition, the more that I much prefer sleeping on my left side, it’s just comfier and I read about some weird study that has shown that it helps the brain to clear from all that could be potentially toxic while you sleep, and I’m all for keeping my brain healthy. But it makes some sense. Sleeping on my right side, as I’ve noticed so far, won’t prevent sleep paralysis if it’s inevitably going to happen, but it’s less intense and shorter. The worse is when you sleep on your back, and that seems to be the case for most people. I hate sleeping on my back but it used to be the position I laid in when awake most of the time so then it hit me hard, now I try to avoid it if I can.
   1.    What’s the longest amount of time you went without sleep? – Thankfully only a bit more than 2 days. The good thing about my insomnia and Zombie days that I feel really lucky about is that I don’t have it the way some people do, that I would go on for days without sleep. If I have a Zombie day, it’s awful, but at least it means that at night I will fall asleep like a baby, and, usually, sleep like a log until early morning, and my sleep cycle will reset nicely and will be really decent and in line with my time zone for a while. Unless I am trying to play a hero and by night am so exhausted that my nervous system just gets overloaded and I can’t fall asleep despite you can’t really say I’m fully awake and sane by then.

Question of the day (28th August).

Hi guys. 🙂

Here are some questions for you.

What were your teenage interests?

My answer:

I think my interests have been, overall, pretty consistent. I don’t think very much has changed since then. At some point, as a teen, I felt very lost, in an emotional and spiritual way, and was full of shitty feelings that I hadn’t let out for years that were bottling up, and, as a way of silent rebellion, I decided I didn’t want to be Christian anymore and desperately tried to believe I was an agnostic, then Wiccan, or something. It was because my school was Catholic, and I felt like there was quite a lot of pressure put on it. But also, my family is very Christian so in a way I wanted to rebel against them too because, what I didn’t fully know back then, deep down I was feeling rejected by them, so I wanted to reject them as well. My Mum once told me that she’s not worried about me, because she knows I’m at the right place, that she knows I’ll never be lost in life because my school is Catholic and because I myself am mature enough to know what’s good for me, as if this was all you need as for not to feel lost at some point in your life. She said she was most worried about Olek, who was doing a lot of silly things at the time. So – because I think deep down I was desperate for attention even though then I’d say I wasn’t – I sort of decided that she’ll have a reason to worry about me too. And I just wanted some adventure, ya know, something fun to do, but most of all, something that could give me an escape from my life. So, getting to the point, I think my only other interests that I don’t have right now but had back then were all the spiritual stuff and esotericism. I was lucid dreaming whenever I could, or doing astral projections, talking to psychics and doing my own rituals and just reading all that I could find on the topic of astrology, esotericism and all that. I still think it’s interesting, but am no longer directly into it, apart from some stuff in astrology that I genuinely think makes some sense. I was also hugely into new age-y things. But most of all, I loved lucid dreaming and experimenting with Doses, which are like sound drugs – these are sounds which change something in your brain waves and simulate the effects of drugs. – They say they’re not addictive so that’s why I gave them a go, but in fact they can damage your brain pretty badly and, really, considering all the stuff I was experimenting with, I assume I must have a really determined and patient Guardian Angel. 😀 Or just as they say, silly people always get lucky haha. Apart from it weakening my relationship with God, and having some obvious but not overly tragical emotional and spiritual consequences that I had to deal with after that, I don’t think it did very much harm to me, not quite as much as it potentially could. I’ve started getting more severe sleep paralysis since then but that doesn’t necessarily have to be related. And my relationship with God was very difficult even before, and I’m still trying to get closer to Him which is at times very difficult, but I think I’m already much more bonded with him than I ever was. Oh, and at that time, I also loved all things Gothic. I wanted to be a Goth, I listened to Gothic music, when I was at home I dressed very much in a Gothic way but without the makeup, I listened to loads of Gothic rock and metal and symphonic metal and such and later on also to artists like Emilie Autumn – I still sort of like Emilie Autumn but listening to her always makes me depressed, and I still listen to some Gothic songs/bands that don’t have something that would go against Christianity in their music/in the way they present themselves, but I’m not half as crazy about it. – I did meet a real 100% Gothic Goth some time later on when that esoteric phase was already over for me and after I came back to God and came back home (it was my dear friend Jacek from Helsinki) who got me into his online Gothic cycle, but, being slightly older and more certain of my own values and all, I didn’t get fully into it, I never became a real Goth. I learned that there are people calling themselves Christian Goths and I identified as such for some time while hanging out with all them Goths in Jacek’s online community, but also I didn’t wear all that stuff and makeup they usually do, didn’t listen to most of their music, so it was a very loose connection. I liked that and liked being one of them but at the same time being a part of such communities, who are sort of supposed to look the same, like the same things etc. was never fully for me and I never truly felt like I belonged there. So, my fascination evaporated relatively quickly, my contacts with Goths loosened even more and then I just only talked to Jacek and all my other interests started to really bloom. I never do all that esoteric stuff anymore and don’t have the slightest desire to do, also I don’t take Doses anymore and don’t do OOBE and such, I sometimes lucid dream because sometimes that’s the only way for me to avoid the scary dreams and sleep paralysis, or it happens without my control, but it’s never like I seriously want to do it. It was always a bit difficult for me anyway because to get to the lucid dream part, first I had to get through terrible sleep paralysis and anxiety that was through the roof. My “transformation” started very suddenly, but that’s a whole new story, and I am so so grateful I got that chance!

How about you? 🙂 How much has changed in your interests since you were a teen? 🙂

Working On Us.

It’s week #4 of Working On Us at

Beckie’s Mental Mess

and I’m very happy to participate in this prompts series for the second time. Last week, I was answering the questions for prompt #1, but this time, I found prompt #2 really relatable. It’s a photo prompt, so I couldn’t actually see it, but Beckie described it and the image of a brain inside of a bird cage really spoke to me. I suppose I should include the photo in my post somehow, but since I have no clue how to do it, and am blind, so don’t need to have a clue about pics haha, I’ll just leave it as it is.

I was thinking about that prompt a lot last evening and thought I would make some piece of creative writing but since I don’t feel very creative at the moment it’ll just be a bit of a ramble.

I’ve been fascinated by brain for years, and it’s one of my main interests. But it’s not only that why I found this prompt so relatable. I could say I often feel as if my brain was locked in a bird cage, and unable to get out, just never thought about such a metaphor before. What does it feel like when your brain is locked in a brain cage? For me, among other things, it means difficulty in releasing emotions, there’s no way to get them out, whether you want it or not. Your brain fills up until it’s all full and all the feelings are one big mishmash, so that sometimes you don’t even know what you feel any longer. Things get mixed up, until finally the brain can’t contain anymore, and things start to leak out. But instead of leaking outside in a proper way, instead of being expressed, they spill all over the cage. It’s flooded with stuff that can’t be released otherwise, and the brain is swimming in all the intense feelings. That’s when overload happens, and I start feeling a lot of intense anger that gets turned inwards, so I feel like self-harming. Sometimes, when the flood is really strong, something will spill outside through the grating, but the cage is tall and thick so it’s really hard. The only way for me to get my brain out of that cage is writing. Then, the bird cage opens and it can fly out and feel more free.

Another thing that a bird cage makes me think of in the context of my brain, is the feeling of alienation, or feeling disconnected, or loneliness in the crowd, inadequacy, or however you want to call it. I like being different, and individualistic, and I like being on my own more than around other people most of the time and feel more comfy with it. But when it becomes a bird cage for my brain is when I do need to be with someone, but for whatever reason can’t make a connection with people. Sometimes it’s like you can see other people from there, but there’s no way of communicating effectively. You can only bang on the cage and hope that they will hear you, but even if they will, they usually won’t be able to help you out, or open the cage, or get close enough that you could communicate, or feel the way you feel. Even if they do get to you, you’ve been living in this cage for so long that you can’t even explain to them what it’s like, and what you need, and they won’t understand, because they live out there in the world which is so very different. So after a couple trials, you just sit in the corner of your cage and look out, watching people come and go. Sometimes they’ll glance in your direction in confusion, not understanding why you are the way you are and live in a bird cage, what’s wrong with your brain that you constantly keep it in there. As if it was your choice. Sometimes you might feel desperate, and try to jump over the cage, but that hardly ever ends up well and is risky, you can easily get hurt. Even if you do get out of there in one piece, you quickly realise that you don’t fit in, and lots of consequences come with it. And after so many years of living in a cage your brain just doesn’t know otherwise and has it hard to adjust and be just like any other brain living in the outside world. So after all, you put your brain back into the cage, voluntarily this time, ’cause a familiar enemy is worse than the one you don’t know anything about and don’t know how to deal with.

That’s the way my brain feels sometimes. Well, regularly. Again, writing, for myself or with/to others, is something that helps, to some degree, especially blogging and penpalling is what I’m thinking of.

Also, I think the bird cage analogy works very well in regards to my sleep paralysis experiences too. It feels like my brain and me are locked up in a bird cage with all my dream monsters. I can see the outside world but they don’t see me, and I can’t run away because my dream “friends” are all over me. The only thing I can do is wait for the dream cage to open and flee as soon as possible.

What’s a bird cage of your brain? How does it look like and what does it represent? 🙂

“Help!” – my short story.

Hi guys. 🙂

I wanted to publish this story already a couple days ago, but I lost what I’ve written so had to rewrite almost everything. Interesting how when I write something, and then read it after a few days, I usually think it’s shitty and delete it immediately, but this time, I think that that first version I wrote was much better and vivid than this one. 😀 This one doesn’t feel quite as natural to me. I couldn’t rewrite it exactly the same way though because I didn’t have any plan or anything, the idea was very spontaneous and only based on the writing prompt from The Haunted Wordsmith.

This is the story about sleep paralysis. Mostly about the way I feel it, although the heroine is not me, I imagine her being quite different from me, and not all her experiences in relation to sleep paralysis are exactly the same. Most of them are though, or at least are based on mine, some things I made up because I thought they were very likely to happen in a sleep paralysis episode. My “Ian” is very similar to hers, although it’s not his name. Melanie’s dreams, hallucinations and thought processes are more logical and understandable and relatable for an outsider than mine are in sleep paralysis.

Also, while I have a lot of the same experiences with other people who have sleep paralysis, not all of them are the same – well, I guess that’s the thing with all conditions that everyone experiences them differently (is sleep paralysis a condition actually?), but some of the differences I experience seem to be a rare thing as I’ve never heard about anyone else having them, also I believe some other things I deal with, including, as I call it, my “sensory” anxiety (I don’t have a better name for it) seem to complicate my sleep paralysis. Many people who have sleep paralysis say they have a full consciousness during it and are often aware of their surroundings, their mind is fully awake, only their body is asleep and they have hallucinations. For me it’s usually different, I either have partial consciousness, or I’m only aware that I’m dreaming, or I’m conscious of what’s going on around only at some moments and not the other, or I have a wild mix of reality and dream which I am not able to distinguish, with dozens of false awakenings usually, which can be very very creepy and realistic as in Melanie’s. It’s not always that intense as melanie’s, sometimes I am able to wriggle out of there by accident, use my consciousness and evoke a more positive dream at least for a while, you know as in lucid dreaming but it doesn’t work long term and it’s still all pretty murky and creepy and I have to be in control of the dream all the time which is not always possible, or I can move my toe or something and then it’s over. But it’s very often very intense and I’m not quite as resilient as Melanie to get over it within a few hours if it is intense, the anxiety usually lingers for days for me and can be very bad at times.

My sleep paralysis is always very difficult to describe for me, first because it just feels so evasive and like it’s hard to find words that would make it comprehensive, but also because if I’m to talk about mine in details it can feel quite upsetting, for different reasons, so I’ve never really talked with anyone much about it other than that I have it or just had it or that it’s scary. So I thought writing that story would be an interesting way to share some of my experiences, and maybe spread some awareness, although I have no idea if it would be relatable for other people who have it. I am aware that it might feel a bit boring and repetitive at times, but sleep paralysis is no fun and you get sick of it even before it really starts, and there’s a lot of repetitiveness in it, so that’s how I feel it should be. When I was a child for a long time my sleep paralysis dreams would actually look exactly identical for years. I’m sorry for any potential linguistic shortcomings as I’m not an English native so they might happen.

If you are an easily upset and very sensitive person, or have sleep paralysis that causes you a lot of distress and you think reading about in detail could unsettle you, please be cautious or stop reading here. Hope it gives you some idea of what it’s like.

Help!

“Help!”

– Melanie shouted, begging her lungs to cooperate. But she could only hear it in her mind. Nothing came out. “Help!!! Help!!! Heeeeeeeelp!!! Help… me…!!!”. She shouted so much, that she didn’t know anymore, was it her real voice, or was it all just in her imagination? But she kept holding on to the hope that, finally, someone will hear her, they surely will, this time it will be different, someone will save her. Chris will see something is wrong, he will save her, maybe he’s right there, sleeping beside her, she just needs to wake him up, scream loud enough. Did she just hear him snoring? Or maybe it’s morning already? God, please, let it be morning, let me wake up. Lily will wake up soon, she has to go to school. “I need to wake up, I have to!” But nothing happened, except she fell deeper, and deeper, and deeper down, no matter what she did, down into the abyss of her mind, which she knew so well, but which always held so many new surprises for her. She was falling faster and faster with every second, unable to control her body, unable to stop or slow it down. Yet at the same time it felt as if she was falling like that for centuries, and was still to do that for many centuries to come. What if I never wake up? But she didn’t have any strength left, or so it felt, to shout more, or to try and go out of where she was. Besides, deep down she knew it all too well that no matter what she does, she won’t be able to stop it, if her brain decided to keep her trapped. Suddenly, the pace of her fall increased much more, and shortly after she reached her destination, falling hard at the bottom of the abyss with a spectacular thud. The fear gripped her throat even more tightly, and the grip tightened even more when she heard the familiar, heavy steps.

– “Aaah, so you’re already here! That’s fantastic… We haven’t seen each other in ages, right? You can’t ignore me like that.”. Before she would even manage to say anything, he fell on her heavily, pressing her to the ground. That was how it usually started. Ian wasn’t a very clever man, but he was certainly a master of suspense. Ian loved routine, but his passion was also to surprise her with something new every time, and everything she had to endure was planned to the smallest detail.

Melanie knew him since she was a very little child, but never told anyone about his existence, and the overwhelming influence he had on her and her life. He would visit her in dreams, scare her to death, leaving repugnant signs of his presence scattered all over her brain. Then he would sometimes leave her alone for weeks, months, sometimes even years. ANd just when she thought she’s cleared up her mind of him, and that she’s free from him, or that she has found a strategy to deal with him and avoid him, he would come back. And with time, she has just gotten used to it, even though the fear never disappeared.

One day when she was a young girl, one of her teachers said something that stayed with her: “We are most scared of what we don’t have a name for. Once we name it, we feel more familiar with it, it feels known, and we aren’t so frightened anymore”. And so, Melanie decided to name him Ian. But it didn’t change anything. The fear was the same.

And now she laid there, with him on top of her, strangling her with one paw and fingering, or rather “clawing” her skin with the other, breathing loudly and yelling insults in her face, threatening her in all the ways he could come up with. His “crew” surrounded them, making eerie, wailing sounds. Someone tied Melanie’s hands and legs so that she was unable to move at all, unable to fight or escape. She felt as if the walls were closing down on her, about to fall down right on her, and the atmosphere of this place was seething with fear, hatred and everything was covered in sinister, impermeable darkness. Ian’s “crew” presented her with all sorts of scary visions, sounds and sensations. In a blink of an eye she saw her father being killed with premeditation, and shouting for help, she knew he could see her, but she wasn’t able to help him out, she was grounded. She saw her house being bombarded in a spectacular way, and then her daughter, Lily, standing beside her mother’s bed and crying over her dead body. She wanted to tell her she’s not dead, she wanted to scream, to console the poor child, but she couldn’t. She could no longer recognise whether it was truth, “just” a dream, or maybe something yet different. All that, and countless other things, she saw as in a flashlight, yet each of those visions looked like in slow motion at the same time. she could hear the strangest and most scary sounds echoing in the abyss, sounding distant yet piercing her ears at the same time. Those were Ian’s “crew”. They imitated voices of people from her life, said scary and cruel things to her in situations that felt as realistic as it was only possible, so she didn’t know anymore what’s real and what’s not. They played with her memories, reviving them, editing them so that they looked sinister. Once in a while, a loud, crazy laughter echoed in the distance. Scary shadows creeped around the ceiling, was it the ceiling of her room, or of her mind’s abyss, she didn’t know. They danced before her eyes, whispering, singing and making unnatural, unhuman noises. Everything was spinning, her body felt numb and floaty, her limbs jerking, her mind foggy. Her mind was all covered in a black, smooth veil, that didn’t let her feel anything other than fear. Her rational mind was switched off and locked away, where she couldn’t reach it. Fear was the only emotion she was allowed and able to feel. And it consumed her whole, not knowing any boundaries. She had no control over it.

Despite being grounded, and unable to move, Melanie tried to fight desperately, to push Ian off herself. Deep down she knew it was a waste of time, because the more she fought, the deeper they both fell down, and the more she was sucked in the dream, but it was an instinct that was stronger than her, and driven by fear. Ian loved when she did it. “Fight as much as you want” – he said one time, with his unnerving grin – “I’ll always win anyway.”.

Somehow, despite being barely able to breathe, move or do anything, she managed to push Ian off herself. As soon as that happened, the ties on her limbs fell down and she got up immediately. Now they started real fighting. With Ian, trying to knock her off again, and herself, trying to run away, or at least keep herself up, to hurt him if possible. The ground beneath her feet felt unsteady, and she felt Ian’s breath on her back all the time. Everything was against her. She was exhausted, and knew she couldn’t keep like that anymore, her body was giving up, soon she’ll be on the ground again. Ian’s “crew” stood around, looking at the battlefield with their soulless, transfixed eyes, yelling “Ian! Ian! Ian!” on top of their voices, as if supporting him. As they fought, the ground under their feet started to transform into sticky mud, that was growing deeper and deeper. Wading through it, Melanie was barely able to move her legs. Finally… it had to happen. Ian knocked her off. She fell down, head into the mud, and as soon as that happened, the mud changed into a stormy sea. The waves crashed erratically, roaring deafeningly and throwing her around like a ball. She could hear Ian’s voice far away, his sinister laughter, silent, but carrying through the water. She fought against the waves with all her might, all the strength she still had. She swam, not knowing where, just to e far away from Ian, and not to sink. Yet it was increasingly difficult. The fear gripped her tighter and tighter, pulling her in the water. “I want an end to this. When will I wake up? Chris! Chris, please help me!”. She screamed and screamed, didn’t even know what, just screamed, in hopes someone from the outside world will finally hear her voice. “Lily! Lily! Come here! Someone help me!!!”. but soon her body succumbed into the water.

She lied there for a long time, her body covered by the water and washed over by the waves, that have calmed down a little. That was better than having to fight all the time. She wouldn’t even mind dying there, or so she felt, but somehow, despite she sank, it didn’t happen. After a while of lying there, she noticed that the water was flowing away, faster and faster. Not much long after, she realised that she’s now on a shallow, her hands touching the sand. From the overwhelmingly big, scary sea, or perhaps even an ocean, this strange body of water suddenly changed into something smaller than a lake. She stood up, and came out to the land, disoriented and weak…

“Mummy! Mummy! Did you call me? What happened?” – suddenly, she saw Lily standing by her bed, worried.

“Oh, nothing, sweetie. I just couldn’t wake up. – she said, laughing nervously, hystericaly, as she thought, at the ridiculousness of her own words.

“Don’t be silly mummy. You wouldn’t call me if you were asleep.” – Lily grinned. Melanie hugged her, breathing in her smell and feeling thankful for the dream to be over. But why did she still feel so floaty and foggy, and so fearful?

“I just had a very long dream.” – she said.

“Oh, Lucky you! I love long, long dreams! It’s so nice to dream and dream and dream, and dream, and dream, and dream… and dream… and dream… and dream… and… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… dream… …” – Lily’s voice suddenly multiplied, echoing around the room, and sounded very unnatural. But where was Lily, actually? One moment she saw her daughter right beside her, and the next there was no sign of her at all. Or maybe it was Melanie who disappeared? It felt much more likely, as she found herself feeling floaty again. Drifting through something as soft as cotton wool. It would feel as a gentle fly, if not the fact that she could feel falling lower and lower, and she knew she would inevitably fall to the ground. With every “dream” her body lowered and fell deeper, and deeper, and deeper down, her mind fell deeper into some strange kind of trance, every single “dream” sucking her into one more eternity of sleep. Her body felt like a ton of bricks, and as if it was weightless at the same time…

Thud! “Yes, you bloody bitch. Now you’ll really have a very long dream. You like to dream, and dream, and dream, don’t you?” – Ian asked her, in his slow, deep, unnaturally calm voice. “He’s not right. It’s just a dream, I wil wake up. I will. I will. I just need to try hard enough”.

The story repeated again, with some additional surprises to the mix, just as Ian liked it. Tons of horrific visions, sounds and sensations that she no longer new to which world they belong – were they the reality, or “just” a dream – raced through her mind.

“Enough of it!” – she cried in her thoughts. “I have to wake up!”. “I need to! I don’t even know what time it is. Someone help me out of here.” In the midst of all the havoc she was going through, the ground started spinning even more under her, so did the ceiling. A big, dark hole opened a milimetre beside her arm, and started to suck her in. The crazy floating started all over again. Melanie yelled for helpfor all she was worth, yet again, no sounds came out of her mouth. She screamed, and screamed and screamed, and again, finally reached the ground, which felt like her own bed. Melanie looked around in disbelief. Was she finally awake? It did look like her own room. She tried making a sound, move her body, and succeeded. Or did she? She knew all too well that what feels true, doesn’t always have to be. It could be as well that her imagination was playing tricks on her. She still felt dizzy from the dream, and completely horrified and disoriented. “Chris?” – her hand searched for the pillow next to hers in the darkness of the bedroom. But Chris wasn’t there. There was only darkness around, but that Chris wasn’t there meant that it’s probably early enough to get up. “Lily?” – she called out, and immediately heard the sound of her daughter’s feet patting on the stairs.

“At last! You woke up, mummy. I’m already late for school. I was wondering why you’re sleeping so long.”

“Oh, really? Is it so late?”

“I guess very late. The sun is up.” – Lily didn’t know how to tell the time yet, and this was the only way she could do it. Melanie reached for her phone, to see what exactly the time was.  Although the relief has been rushing through her body, she still felt very strong consequences of her dream, her body still felt numb, her mind foggy, and the world was spinning. She was more tired than when she went to bed, and didn’t like the perspective of getting up and out of the house. And the fear was still crippling, she needed time to pick herself up. But she must have been felt even worse than she thought, because suddenly she realised she can’t unlock her phone. Well, she was sure that unless something happened to her brain, her password had to be correct, she was using the same gesture for ages, so maybe the phone was broken…? Phew, finally, the phone started to cooperate. Her wallpaper was changed, and some of the settings appeared to be different than how she usually had everything set up, but oh well, the phone was old, and yeah, Lily was playing games on it yesterday so maybe she did something to it accidentally. When she looked at the clock though, she was even more amazed and concerned about her sanity. The hour was changing! All the time. When she looked at it once, it would show 5 PM (way too late to go to school, let alone wake up), then 2 AM, then 6:30 AM, etc. etc. sometimes the hours were really out there, like 111:35, and weird things would appear on the screen next to them. Melanie panicked slightly – she knew all too well from her dreams that the numbers Ian seemed to always like were 111 and 35, they were symbolic for him in her dreams. “Really, Mel, pick yourself together!” – she thought. – “You have a nightmare and you go crazy. Something’s wrong with the phone, that’s all.”

“OK, darling, let’s have a quick breakfast then.” – she said, slowly getting up and battling the fog. Whatever the hour was, something to eat would be a good idea.

She got dressed, wondering when she’ll start to feel normal and more energised. She still felt like one leg in Dreamland. And the fear, the fear was still there. No smaller than at the beginning. She made breakfast for them both, which tasted like soap, still feeling unsafe and wishing that Chris hadn’t gone to work yet. She did a quick make-up, made sure Lily had everything she needed in her schoolbag, and they both went out. Melanie was a fit and healthy woman, an avid swimmer,and tried her best to live healthily. Therefore Lily’s school, being only 5 minutes away from their house, was never a problem for her to get to. Many parents having a similar distance would take their offspring to school every day by car, and were astonished seeing Melanie and Lily walking all the way even in the rain if there was a more comfortable alternative and taking less time and effort. But today, this short walk felt like an eternity to her. The ground under her feet was spinning, and felt as it was about to crack and consume her, she felt unsteady, barely able to catch her breath, fear rushing through her veins. Somehow she finally reached the school though, left Lily in the class, and slowly went back home. The way home was even more difficult, without a little, warm hand squeezing her hand. As she approached her house, she shakingly took out the key, warily opened the door, and not even thinking much about it, peeped in the house before coming in, as she supposed someone would be there. She couldn’t see anyone or anything, so came in, and through the dimly lit hall, not really knowing where she was going or where she should go. Her feet carried her upstairs to her room. She opened the door, and again, peeped in cautiously before coming in. She closed the door behind herself, and only then she saw…

There he was… Sprawled on her bed, with his legs stretched out, he laid on her bed, grinning appalingly at her. “God, I’m still dreaming! Or is he real”. The floor under her feet, feeling more and more unsteady, finally didn’t manage the pressure of her feet. She fell. ONce again. “God, can you help me? Will this ever stop? And if it will, how will I know it’s real? How can I know that when I don’t know when I’m awake, and when I’m dreaming? I already am not sure. Maybe it’s just a fucking psychosis.” – she thought in panic. Melanie was by no means a religious person. She didn’t have anything against any religion, and did believe that there is some God, although she never thought much about him, other than optimistically hoping he’s good, and doing all that He can to care for the world, and has a good plan to come out even from the worst things that happen to people, and that one day after she dies, maybe she’ll see Him, and be happy in some celestial, glossy new world with her family, and this enigmatic God being something like a good grandpa figure for her. She didn’t have a habit of praying though, and didn’t really feel it. And now, as she was trying to pray, so desperately, she couldn’t. She couldn’t find any words, neither of the prayers she learnt from her grandmother as a child, nor could she pray with her own words. Her mind was blank.

Let’s spare you the details of yet another episode of the neverending series of Melanie’s encounters with Ian. It’ll be enough to say that during that short time, she endured dying in a plane crash (by falling out of its window all the way through to the ground without a parachute), her legs being cut off by her own mother, who threatened to kill her if she’ll ever tell anyone who did it to her (no, Melanie’s real mother wasn’t a sociopath, just a tiny, cuddly, elegant lady, full of smiles and gracefulness, which made the execution the more spooky, to Ian’s pleasure), and seeing deformed corpses wandering around her kitchen and eating random stuff right out of her fridge. Melanie wasn’t a squeamish or oversensitive person. She was a very down-to-earth lady, working as a sales assistant, and, in normal circumstances, was always calm, collected and level-headed. In normal circumstances, she’d probably laugh it off, but with that black veil covering her mind, the atmosphere of the abyss of her mind, and Ian’s presence, which always freaked her out just by itself, the fear was unbearable.

“Mel! Mel! Wake up sleepy head, I’ve made pancakes for you!” – Chris called out cheerfully, standing in their bedroom door. “Have some good piece of news for you.”

Melanie felt a bit surprised. She couldn’t complain about Chris. He was always very caring and loving for her, but making pancakes for her, that wasn’t very like him. Suddenly, not thinking much about what she was doing, Melanie sprang out of bed, and ran right into Chris’s arms, who was now looking very astonished and worried, as she was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.

“Oh dear, what’s happened?” – he brought her back on the bed, sat her on his knees and hugged her, running his fingers through her hair. Melanie desperately wanted to get rid of the fog sticking to her brain. SHe felt sluggish and weak, but wanted to share with Chris her dark secret. She never did before. “You know… I have those bad dreams…” – she said hesitantly. – “Yeah? And you had one now?”. – – “Yes. It was so… so creepy.”.

A weird thing then happened. Melanie felt as if at this moment, Chris could see what it was like for her. Look into her brain. See all the horrors she’s been through as clearly as if he experienced them himself, with the exact intensity. And she knew he understood. After a long while, he just said: “Now I see. I just wish you told me earlier. We will do something about it, together we’ll do that I promise.”. It sounded so reassuring. So doable. That she started sobbing all over again. “But I have a good news for you. A little surprise. I want to invite you to a ball today. My company is organising it and we can come with our family members. You remember? We were there last year too, weren’t we?” –

“Oh, really! Today? This is a surprise indeed!” – said Melanie, happy that something will distract her from what happened at night, and that her relationship with Chris suddenly looks so much better than ever, so much more harmonious. She was just a bit worried about her condition. She felt weak, wiped out and really not the best. Oh well, it will wear off until the evening, won’t it?

It didn’t, but as they were entering the exquisite hall, that was changed into the colourful and elegant ballroom for the night, Melanie tried her best to distract from the inner feeling of insecurity and fear lurking in every corner of her brain. She had Chris. There were loads of people. Many were their friends. SHe’ll have fun. It’ll be OK.

She danced with Chris, his one colleague, then another, then his boss, feeling more and more dizzy with each dance. The bright lights and loud music were really unsettling for her. THey felt really aggressive. “I guess I’m getting older.” – she said to Chris with a giggle, telling him that she doesn’t  feel well. “You just have to relax. You’re too stressed out by your work. I told you many times you’re going to suffer from it.” – “Maybe you’re right”. – she sighed, unconvinced. And just as she did it, she felt her heart sinking. She automatically looked in the direction of the entrance. She could barely contain her fear. “How can a real person look like that… I must be going crazy.”. She came closer to Chris, who was now chatting to one of his colleagues. “Chris?!” – she said, and he must have heard the urgency and panic in her voice as he apologised to the colleague and took her aside. “What’s the matter?”

“Did you see that man, the one who just came in?”

“Which one?” – Chris appeared slightly confused. “The one in red. He’s all in red.” – she uttered feeling a lump in her throat. How come everyone didn’t notice him? He looked so overwhelming, so different, his eyes so evil, how could people not see it? And why was he here? Melanie desperately wanted to believe it’s just someone looking very similar. “Ah, yeah, I see.” – Chris said after a moment. “What’s the problem with him?” “What’s the problem?!” – Melanie thought in panic. “He… he looks like… him… you know… like… like him” “What him?” – asked Chris, a slight hint of impatience in his voice. “Him!” – Melanie felt tears filling her eyes. The connection that was between them not long ago has gone now. “The… the guy from my dream? Do you know him?” “No, Mel, I’m afraid I can’t read in your dreams, I don’t know who you’re talking about.” “I’m asking if you know this man!” – she said, exasperated. “Hmmm… guess not, can’t remember him, and he’s quite characteristic, but it’s possible I’ve seen him somewhere, there are so many people milling around here every day. Maybe you know him too, and that’s why he looks so familiar to you.” “Maybe. I don’t want to talk to him anyway. i don’t want to talk to anyone. Can we go now? I feel completely shattered” “Don’t be silly, honey, we’ve been here only for two hours, we can’t go out just yet. Maybe go out and get some fresh air in. I’ll be with you in a moment, I need to the loo”. Melanie thought it was actually a good idea. She’ll go out and won’t have to look at that man, whoever he was. She can always call a taxi and go home on her own if she feels really scared. But first of all, what’s the reason to be so scared? Just because he looks like Ian? It wasn’t like her, she tried to rationalise, but her mind wouldn’t listen. The fear rose with every second.

She gasped for air when she came out on the balcony. For some reason, she felt constantly out of breath since she woke up. Just like she did in her nightmares. She gratefully appreciated the cold, brisk wind blowing in her face. There were a couple other people on the balcony, whom she didn’t know, mostly smoking their cigarettes, and one woman whispered nervously to someone on the phone. As she stood there, looking at the sky, she suddenly heard the door opening and someone else came out on the balcony. She turned around, expecting that it was Chris who came out of the loo, but it was one of his colleagues’ wife – Ellen. – Both her and her husband were occasional guests at their house, so Melanie knew her a bit and although never particularly liked, always admired her for her style and wit.

“Oh, hello, Melanie.” – she said, smiling politely only with her mouth. “We were looking for you and I thought you may be here.” Only when Ellen said “we” did Melanie noticed that there was a man accompanying her, whom she just glanced at and thought it was Ellen’s husband. She wondered what they might want from her. The only contact they had with her so far was through Chris, with Jim being his colleague and friend, and there really wasn’t much apart from their social connections that Melanie and Ellen had in common. “Turns out we have the same friend, Ian told me he knows you.” Hearing the name “Ian” Melanie jumped up as if someone pricked her with a pin. “You know Ian?” – she asked, feeling all the blood going down to her feet

“Oh of course I do! He’s my long time friend! But I’d better go, Jim doesn’t like me to disappear at parties for too long” – she giggled, and went back to the hall with the click-clack of her stilettoes. Ian heavily placed his hand, or paw, or however he prefers to call his extremities only he knows, covered in a velvet, red glove on Melanie’s shoulder, which she felt like a flame burning through her skin.

“Do you understand it now?” – he asked, slowly, calmly, quietly, scarily, in his deep, low voice. “Do you understand that I’m with you all the time?”

“No you’re not! You’re just a dream!!!”

“I know Ellen. She’s not a dream. And I will gladly get to know everyone that will give me the access to you anytime I want. Now will you go back with me where you should be now, or do I have to convince you?”

“I won’t do anything you want from me!”

“We’ll see.” – he just said, and laughed cynically. “We’ll ask Chris if he needs you, and if he doesn’t I’ll take you with me. I don’t want him to be jealous” – he laughed again, it was a dry, unpleasant sound. He dragged her into the hall, and found Chris, who was just happily chatting away with Ellen. If Melanie’s ability to feel anything else than fear wasn’t muffled at the time, she’d probably kill Ellen with anger and frustration, not caring for the consequences. Not only had she now her dream enemy – Ian – but also Ellen, who was real, who was happy to leave her with this monster and then spend the time happily with her husband, who was unaware of anything.

“Nice to meet you, Chris.” – Ian said, trying his best to smile. “Would you have something against me taking your wife for a short walk outside? We are old friends and I’m so happy to see her here again, so many years have passed…”

“Of course you can if you want” – Chris said happily. Chris. The one who was always so jealous about her even simply hanging out with other men. Now, when she needed him, he was happy to leave her with Ian, and would rather spend time with Ellen. “Chris! Please, don’t let him!” – she said. But there was no Chris, no ELlen, no ballroom, only darkness and fear. And herself falling down… and deeper down… There was even no Ian.

She was falling like that for a good while, and then fell down with a thud again, but falling on to something smooth, and not as violently as usual, her limbs jerking at the same time.

She slowly opened her eyes. The morning sun was cheerfully peeking through the window, but to her it felt unbearably bright. She felt as if she had a hangover. The room felt hot, her whole body sticky with sweat all over her skin, yet shaking and feeling chilly at the same time. Her head was throbbing, her ears ringing, heart racing, lungs gasping for breath, she felt dizzy, foggy and floaty… a very familiar feeling. Now she knew. She had sleep paralysis again. She felt so exhausted, that she would most happily close her eyes and fall asleep again. But she couldn’t. He would wait right there to get her in his claws again. But was she truly awake? Wasn’t it another false awakening? How can she know that? Melanie looked around paranoid as if she expected someone to be lurking in the corner of the room or behind the courtain, holding her breath. She couldn’t see anyone. battling the feeling of drowsiness, she sat up in bed. And she sat there, staring in the ceiling and not knowing for how long, the scenes of her dream replaying in her mind. When she finally felt strong enough to get up, she looked at the clock. It was only 7:30 AM. THe hour wasn’t changing, so she could hope she was indeed in the real world right now. Deep down she knew it, but she needed time to believe in it and feel sure. She found a small piece of paper on her bedside cabinet. “I took Lily to school. I was awake and you seemed to sleep so heavily and blissfully I didn’t want to wake you up. Chris x”. Melanie flinched. How was it possible someone could think she slept heavily and blissfully? Once more she realised there was no one who could help her out of those dreams other than herself. And how long could that dream last? Maybe 30 minutes, not much more. And she had experienced so much in this short time. It felt creepy.She had experiences from her past sleep paralysis episodes where she could see Chris getting up, or going into the room, and she would yell for help, but he wouldn’t hear her.

She went to the bathroom right away, and had a very cold shower, to get rid of the sweat, the headache and the fog around her brain. Only then she was able to really believe that the dream was over, and she was safe now. She wanted to believe it, despite the dream felt so bloody real.

She went back to her room to get dressed and make the bed, then to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and something to eat, then back to the bathroom to brush her teeth and hair, etc… And everywhere she went, she turned the lights on, so that soon the whole house was lit up. She felt like a child, scared of monsters lurking in the darkness under the bed. She constantly looked around as if she supposed someone was observing her. This too needed time to pass. Despite that sometimes she felt that if she was going to have such dreams often enough, at some point she will truly believe they are real.

Thankfully, it was Wednesday, meaning that she wouldn’t have to go to work until the afternoon. She knew that until then, she’ll recover, she will have to. She can’t go around looking like a frightened hare at work. She has gotten used to her sleep paralysis dreams, this one was just long and particularly difficult, but she will get over it.

And – of course – she did. Melanie’s clients and colleagues would never believe that only last night she spent ages fighting her worst enemy, and never knew when she will see him again. Therefore, she was trying to make the most of all the time she had in between. And not to believe all the bullshit he was telling and showing her. because as long as she didn’t believe it, he couldn’t win.

 

Question of the day.

How do you sleep? Side, stomach, or back?

My answer:

I’m normally used to sleep on my left side, like it’s a sort of default sleep position for me, and once I read an article saying that sleeping on the left side is good for your brain, that in some way it can help you get rid of the toxins…? something like that, so thanks to this you can help your cognitive functions. While I couldn’t really gather how those two things could be connected, and found it quite funny, of course as a big brain freak I was happy, first to know that, and second, that I already do that so won’t have to learn to sleep in a different position. 😀 Even if I didn’t treat it fully seriously, I can do a lot to keep my brain fit so why not. However, recently, like in the last two years or so my sleep paralysis has gotten a bit worse, or at least much more frequent and way more creepy anyway, so although it’s always been a downright scary experience for me and affecting me sometimes for days on end, I normally didn’t care much about it, and for a long time I didn’t even know what it is, when it has worsened and I got sick of it I started to look into it for ways to alleviate it somehow. And among other things I read that the likelihood of sleep paralysis, as well as other of those lucid dream experiences is increased for everyone when you sleep on your back, it’s most likely then, and the second position in which you’re most likely to get sleep paralysis is to sleep on your left side, and it looked like sleeping on the right side is the safest in terms of this. I really didn’t think that for me there was any strong connection between the position in which I sleep and sleep paralysis – quite the opposite, if I ever had to lie in bed during the day for any reason and was afraid of falling into sleep paralysis, I would lie on my back because then I felt like I was less likely to fall asleep. – I can’t fall asleep on my back usually, unless I’m really exhausted or really close to sleep paralysis anyway, I think it’s not the most comfortable position and I admire my Dad who had to go through a heart surgery a couple years ago, and was in very long recovery during which he wasn’t allowed to sleep in any other position than on the back, which wasn’t how he usually slept. I actually wondered how he can do that and sleep well, or if, maybe I should say. Anyway, he’s gotten used to it so much that he sleeps this way all the time now. But even though I never associated my sleep paralysis with sleeping in any particular position, sleeping on the back always felt sort of unsafe to me for some reason. and in my sleep paralysis dreams I often think that I’m lying on my back which makes it easier for my sleep friends to deal with me and makes me feel everything more intensely. But after some observation I realised that, OK, maybe for me it’s not like I have sleep paralysis in one position and don’t have in the other, but if I do happen to fall into sleep paralysis while lying on my back, it’s way more creepy and intense than when I’m lying on my right side. Same about the left and the right side, although the difference is not as strong. Sometimes when I would fall asleep feeling that I have it almost guaranteed that this time I’ll have sleep paralysis, I managed to avoid it because I slept on the right side. So I still do have it, and as regularly as before, sometimes I do have very creepy stuff, but overall it’s less intense. I usually like to sleep curled up with my legs bent, I have lots of pillows in my bed for different purposes hahaha, and I sleep on two of them, usually with my one hand under one of them, and if Misha’s with me we hold each other’s hands and paws until we both fall asleep and this way we sleep the best. I don’t know how people can fall asleep on their stomach either, it feels very uncomfortable to me for a longer time, but my brother sleeps in this position most often and likes it and he says he has very cool dreams when he sleeps this way, so maybe I should try. 😀 Not that I suffer from lack of nice dreams, I tend to usually have very vivid dreams, no matter whether nice or not, so when they are nice, they are twice as nice because I can remember lots of details. But it would always be cool to have more of them.

What is your favourite position to sleep in? 🙂

River.

River. I like this word in English. River is one of my favourite nature baby names for both genders. I would never use it, but it’s very interesting. And I like rivers in general. I like to hear them lapping, I like to dip my feet into a river. We have a river running through our backyard. As you may remember from my earlier posts, because we have the river running through our backyard, and because our street is literally called Acacia Street, we named our house, even if it’s not common in Poland, and its name is Acacia River.

And I like how this word is versatile and can give a lot of space for your imagination.

I can say that my mind is a river – of neverending thoughts, dreams and memories. They can be calm and gentle one minute, I can hear its waters splashing peacefully and playfully, I often let the water carry me wherever it wants, and sometimes would like to never have to come back from wherever it brings me to. Because the river of my mind can bring me to some very nice, interesting places, where I could never be otherwise. I happily drift at its waves, immersing myself in the water, which feels so very smooth and calm, and I am happy to play in it like a child.

The next minute though, it can become very unpredictable. It’s more like a sea than a river then. I can suddenly feel there is more and more water around me, and it’s hard to get out. The splash becomes deafening, I can’t hear anything besides. The waves surround me and it’s harder and harder to fight them, I  can fall over anytime. My thoughts are racing, memories overflowing, and I can’t have any control over them. My most beautiful dreams become the most dreadful nightmares which overwhelm me so that I can barely move. Sometimes, everything around gets flooded too. Once in a while, through the mad roar of waves, I can hear someone jauntily sailing by. I want to scream to them, ask them to rescue me and help me out, but I can’t. Even if I could, there’s way too much water all around, and waves are roaring, so they wouldn’t hear me. All I can do is wait. Sometimes, I feel I’m sinking and there is just no way out and will never be. I subside into the mud and the waters are closing above me, not willing to let me out. It feels scary. Even though you’re at the bottom, your darkest thoughts, saddest memories, scariest dreams, your depression and all your anxieties, they can still reach you. And now you can’t fight. So you have to wait…

Eventually, the water will always throw me ashore and let me go, which doesn’t make it less difficult and frightening, but always gives me some small glimmer of hope that it will be better.

And then, after all, things get back to normal for some shorter or longer time, and the river of my mind is peaceful and safe again, with some occasional stronger waves flooding through it, until another storm comes.

What would you compare your mind to?

If We Were Having Coffee… #WeekendCoffeeShare.

Weekend Coffee Share at Eclectic Alli’s.

 

Welcome to another coffee share. We’ve had some rain today so it’s cooler (a little bit), but still I’d rather recommend ice coffee than normal hot coffee.

If we were having coffee I’d ask everyone of you how you’re doing and what’s been going on for you…

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’ve had a rather rough week, particularly last days of it, but I’ll get into it later on.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you it was my aunt’s 40th birthday on Monday. I supposed she’d be doing something massive as it would be quite her style but there was only a small, or relatively small, family gathering. I planned not to go and just phone her and wish her happy birthday, but eventually I decided to go because she wouldn’t answer. We aren’t really getting along too well with that aunt, despite she’s my God mother and it wasn’t always this way, I guess our personalities clash totally and in a way are too similar, but on the other hand we’re too different in other aspects at the same time. And there was a minor but quite nasty incident with her that regarded me which left me feeling quite unstable, but I got over it rather quickly since it’s rather about her issues than mine or anyone else’s.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you I’ve started some collaboration with Nameberry. Don’t know yet what if anything will come out of it long term, but as you could notice I wrote a guest post for their blog. It was a lot of fun and I feel quite excited about it, and proud of myself cause I think the post is really good.

The following few paragraphs may be a bit lengthy and might feel hard or perhaps potentially triggering for someone, so if you feel uncomfortable just skip them.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you I had an awful, absolutely shitty day on Thursday. I just thought my brain will explode with anxiety, even on my extra anxiety meds, it was just nuts. That night my Mum couldn’t sleep so she came to me – ’cause if anyone can’t sleep in this house it’s of course usually me so she usually comes to me when she can’t sleep and checks if I’m up too so we can share the pain haha. She took a mattress with her and said it’s very hot in her room and whether she could sleep in mine, so I agreed. There was my poor Braille-Sense charging and the light was flickering so I told her she can switch it off and she did. Then we both fell asleep and slept rather soundly. But at like 6 Braille-Sense couldn’t stand it any longer and woke us up that it wants to eat. It’s so old it literally can’t make it without a recharger, even when you don’t do anything to him, a total addict. So I jumped out of the bed to shut him up immediately. Unfortunately Mum woke up too and decided it’s time for her to get up. We chatted for a while and she went out, I still felt quite sleepy though so went back to bed. Despite sleepiness, I couldn’t fall asleep for like 15 minutes, maybe a bit more. Usually, when I wake up at night but still want to get back to sleep but the break is too long, like 30 minutes or longer, and I still can’t fall asleep, I don’t try anymore, because then I usually end up with sleep paralysis. But it was just like about 15 minutes and I definitely felt like I still could use some sleep. I guess my brain was in a rather malicious mood and it wouldn’t let me. Instead, I did fall into sleep paralysis. Sometimes it lasts longer, I can notice when I float away and with some physical and mental effort get away from there, but this time it all just happened so rapidly, plus like I said I felt sleepy so didn’t fully realise when my sleepiness turned out into floatiness and everything felt distant, gloomy. It was only when I felt that awful, huge wave of anxiety washing over me, actually filling in the atmosphere arund me, that I realised what’s going on, and it was way too late. My brain felt tired and floaty, my consciousness started to change in that weird way and my limbs felt heavy. I started to feel dizzy and slip down into the darkness with light speed, I actually never was falling so quickly before, or can’t remember.

I won’t go into details as for what happened next, I mean as for the exact content, because it’s incredibly hard to describe those, hm, “dreams”, first because it’s just all so abstractive, elusive, subjective, but also because it’s just too scary. Sometimes I feel I maybe should write about it in detail somewhere or talk to someone but it’s always too scary and way too hard to describe. But what I can tell you is that it was al full of anxiety, doom and gloom. I feel like maybe in other circumstances it wouldn’t be so scary, it’s mainly just the atmosphere of anxiety and inevitable danger around that makes it so horrifying, most of the anxiety provoking things are actually things I was very afraid of in childhood, now either not so much (in real life) or I just don’t have contact with these things anymore. These dreams are full of very anxiety provoking, aggressive sounds, don’t know if they’d sound so for everyone, but so are they for me, often with very intricate, gloomy harmonies. All those anxiety stimuli are actually weirdly personified, they’re all like real people, spirting with hatred towards me and doing everything in their might to make me feel more helpless.

Besides all those anxieties, there’s also often some plot in those dreams, often very chaotic and consisting of single, not related, scary events, although I’ve been having those dreams since very early childhood and at the beginning they were always very schematic and predictable.

I actually don’t know if it’s exactly sleep paralysis, because people who have sleep paralysis usually seem to have full consciousness, while in my case it’s like I’m half-conscious most of the time, and often things that happen in the outside world mix quite creepily with my dreams. Sometimes I am only aware that I am dreaming, or sometimes I have sort of two perspectives – one is inner where I only see what’s in my dreams, and another is where I only can see what’s on the outside, can hear the music, people talking, but obviously can’t interact or anything. Sometimes I know I am dreaming but I don’t know what’s going on on the outside and my brain makes up things that don’t happen, but are very, very, very realistic. Also, people with sleep paralysis often have a sensation that someone or something is literaly sitting on them, like they feel strong pressure which makes breathing harder. For me breathing in those dreams is often very difficult but I had this pressure only once, however I’ve had the motive of someone assailing me, knocking me off, wanting to harm me physically, not letting me move etc. But I too, like many people with this condition often feel some sense of someone’s presence before I fully fall into it and am having other sorts of delusions before it really starts. Besides those people with sleep paralysis I know of usually feel very frustrated with not being able to move, they are aware they can’t move, while I often am not aware that I can’t. I see myself doing different things in dreams, hear myself screaming, fighting with my dream “friends”, getting up, etc. while in fact nothing happens and I’m just lying. Sometimes it may be that I dream I am going to my Mum to help me, and then another creepy thing happens, making me realise I’m still at the very same dead point I was before and no one is going to help me except for myself. I dream I am turning on music on my Plextalk to get rid of the nasty sounds and the anxiety but of course since I can’t move my hands I don’t do it in reality, so either my Plextalk also is against me, or doesn’t work, or something creepy happens. Also some other things don’t look exactly like sleep paralysis but I don’t know what else it could be and still it’s incredibly similar to what I experience so that’s why I call it this way, since I didn’t know for years what it actually is, I just thought everyone’s nightmares look this way for a long time.

And what’s very characteristic to those dreams for me lately, and the most exhausting I guess, are false awakenings. I just hate them so much.

If you don’t know what a false awakening is, although I guess it’s pretty easy to guess, imagine that you sleep happily, or not happily, doesn’t matter, then you get up as every normal human being, do your morning routines, go out to work, or do whatever else, and out of the blue you realise you’ve been  in your bed all the time and it was just a dream. Incredibly realistic, with all the things you do during the day, just in the same order as you do them, with people saying normal things, the only abnormal thing being it was just a dream. And, if you’re particularly lucky and dreamy, then it can go over and over and over again. Wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast… back in bed…

And so it is often for me, only that if it happens during sleep paralysis, it occurs in a very scary form.

I scream, fight, run away, choke, fall down, rise up, do whatever to just survive, and then… boom! it’s as if you fell down from somewhere high on your bed. Oh, great, so I’m awake! Thanks Goodness, finally! Get up, get dressed, feed Misha, and suddenly… hmm, where did actually Misha disappear? he was right in front of me a second ago wasn’t he? But now it’s not Misha, but one of my dream “friends” right in front of me, laughing at me like crazy, everything is dizzy and I slip back right where I was before. Etc. etc. etc. in the same pattern.

But most often it’s like I am in there, in my dreams, and desperately want to get back to life, try to move, test whether everything around me is real or not, do anything to get rid of the floatiness in my brain and get closer to the real world. I often hear people calling me, like my Mum waking me up, even if it is not true, motivate myself to get up and… finally I manage. I am glad, but still the anxiety flows everywhere I feel floaty, and often even like I was still in some way paralysed, like I wouldn’t have much control over my moves or something. But I try to not care, or ignore it completely, usually in this situation I go to whoever is around to help me and make me feel safer, although I never do this when I really wake up. They often help me, are very compassionate, sometimes are cruel and turns out they’re collaborating with my dreammates, like when I was a kid I once dreamt that my Mum wanted to cut my foot because they forced her. 😀 Sometimes they don’t want to cooperate with them but have to, sometimes they’re very willing. Whatever happens though, finally I always slip back there, scared and disappointed, and confused as for what is real. Sometimes it is so that I may live my “normal” life for quite long and then finally realise that something doesn’t really look very realistic and that then it has to mean it is a dream, and then everything starts over with a lot of chaos. Usually then I see some creepy scenes not necessarily with me in one of the main roles, often as an observer. And then again I’m scared and want to wake up, gradually more and more confused as for what is real, am I sleeping or awake, what’s generally going on.

Often after that episode I’m exhausted and fall into very deep, heavy sleep, sometimes it’s completely dreamless and sometimes I have some disturbing bad or weird dreams, but rather mildly bad in comparison to the sleep paralysis. But despite it’s so heavy it’s rarely really good sleep.

When I finally wake up for good, I am usually very puzzled for a little while and obviously usually feel a lot of anxiety, but it usually passes away quickly. I mean, I can be anxious for quite a while, but not as much as when I wake up, when it can be really really high. I usually get over it quickly.

But the last time, that Thursday morning, it waas a hardcore. It lasted for like THREE HOURS, I fel like it was scarier than ever. I have very good dream memory, which is also a blessing in many circumstances, but when I woke up after all that and remembered what I dreamt about, it was hard to get over it and get some distance to it, just feeling relief that it was only a dream. When I wake up for real, after all those false awakenings, I always know well I’m awake and am no longer confused, but last time I started to wonder. What if I am still asleep? Deep down I knew it’s over, but what if not? What if some day I’ll wake up and just won’t be able to tell what’s real from what’s not? It scared me even more.

I went downstairs still feeling a bit floaty from the dream and very scared, tired as if I really was fighting with someone for three hours and unsettled. Mum was in the kitchen and said she couldn’t wait for me to come and that now I am surely well rested after so much sleep. She said she was in my room twice and I slept so heavily. I guess I could hear her once, or it was my imagination.

I usually try not to make too much drama around my dreams because I know there isn’t any universal cure for it and that it always distresses my Mum cause she doesn’t know what to do about it and feels helpless, but this time it was that little bit too much to bear for me. I felt shaky like jelly and couldn’t stop tears from falling so she was quite amazed what’s going on, and it took her a while to get it out of me because I was a real real mess. I took all my anxiety meds, I mean two pills of my basic one and one of the extra med, but I was still shaky, my head was hurting like a bitch, and I felt like a true drama queen because it was actually Mum’s nameday so the guests were about to come. Poor Zofijka was looking around puzzled askign everyone what happened and not getting any consistent answer. Finally I managed to take a long bath and then Mum sent me back to bed although I was really anxious as for that since I didn’t want to get trapped by my beautiful brain again.

I was so tired that I did fall asleep almost immediately but slept very soundly. Things have changed a little bit after I woke up, I mean outside, not so much inside, I was still in pieces and very hypervigilant and all. But felt good enough to get down to the guests for a while and keep a socially decent and logical conversation.

I got back to my room and then I realised the cold, hard truth… the Internet was off! That meant a really hard day for me. After those dreams I am always very sensitive as for silence and can’t stand it, same as some particular sounds. Most of my music was online. Most of things I could do at that moment to distract myself the best were online, particularly now as the guests were in. Smalltalk isn’t particularly stimulating nor distracting for me and I would rather feel bored, and I couldn’t ask my parents for any help as they were with them, and Zofijka was playing with other kids who came in. Misha always escapes when too many people are around, and usually to my room, but when they came I was asleep and my room was closed so he went somewhere else and I didn’t know where he was. So there weren’t many things I could do, I was mostly reading, and listening to music I had, helped Mum in the kitchen afterwards, but was still incredibly tense and overloaded. It was just so horrifying, I haven’t feel such extreme things for a long while before then.

The Internet hasn’t come back even at night, so again I was left to only my own resources, and night was twice as hard, even though sometime later on Misha had mercy on me and came to me. It was nightmare and I had a feeling I’m just going crazy and things won’t be as they were before anymore, that I’ll just always live with such high level of anxiety. Needless to say I didn’t even try to fall asleep, quite the opposite.

The next day it was slightly better though. And you know what turned out then? My brilliant Mum, when she slept in my room, she messed up with the router somehow while she was switching things off. And it only needed to be rebooted. It was funny but also frustrating because I really needed some distraction that day and Mum told me there is probably some more general damage like at our Internet provider or something, so I just accepted it and didn’t even try to fix it myself. 😀

I was still very anxious, but since I had many more productive things to do then, and some time has passed, it was much more manageable.

And so it is now. I still haven’t recovered fuly from that nasty episode, I feel. But I am a bit more stable and don’t freak out without Misha.

I wonder what was actually going on with those dreams. Was it just an accident it was so long and so rough, just a random thing, or is something changing and it is going to get worse? If so, I think I’ll really need to try hitting it with antidepressants, I once saw a neurologist for that and she said it sometimes works for people, but then I decided I will try to handle it with some better sleep hygiene and stuff. But if you have messed up sleep cycle by nature, regular sleeping and waking up and maintaining sleep hygiene isn’t always that easy, so I guess the time for antidepressants will finaly come sooner or later, even though I haven’t heard about people for whom it would be helpful. But it shouldn’t be harmful, so I guess I’ll try if it’s going to stay this way.

If we were having coffee I’d tel you today is my friend’s 1st death anniversary. Man I still can’t believe he’s dead. I never told you about that, I feel weird talking about his death still, not like I can’t accept it but like it’s just so weird to talk about him that he’s dead. I am talking about Jacek, that Jacek who was writing the novel about vikings. He was such a lively, energetic person, always full of ideas and so bubbly. But he got osteosarcoma and then there were some nasty metastases, it just progressed very quickly. I couldn’t get it for weeks that he was dead, and still my brain doesn’t fully get it I guess. I will maybe do some longer post in memory of him, because he was such a remarkable man, I need to think about this. He was only 25 when he died. And he told me he’s going to Valhalla. 🙂

And quite in the same topic, if we were having coffee I’d tell you that yesterday my friend wrote to me, with whom I haven’t have any contact since before Jacek has passed away. She is our mutual friend Jacek’s and mine. She is Swedish – Jacek had lots of friends in Sweden and Finland and I’ve met some interesting people via him – and this particular girl I met when we were all three collaborating on Jacek’s online radiostation, I was volunteeering as a sound engineer there and has learned a lot during that short episode, about broadcasting, vikings, not to mention sound engineering, and many other things. And that girl, Annika, she was one of the presenters and that’s how we met online. She is a Slavic languages freak and has been learning Polish and other Slavic languages since early childhood just as it’s been with my Swedish. ANyway. We were never very close because we just knew each other through Jacek, but I’ve always liked her, she’s really sweet and down to earth. We haven’t talked almost at all since Jacek’s death though, there just weren’t any occasion. And I was greatly surprised seeing a message from her. She wrote to me to say she’ll be getting married soon. With a Pole, haha. And I am very happy she shared it with me and that I could catch up on her, and that she seems to be in a happy and already quite long lasting relationship. And because it was so close to Jacek’s death anniversary we also talked about this in length. And seems like we both feel the same way about this, that we don’t quite believe it yet. I was really glad to be able to write with her for a while. And it’s so cool she’ll be living in Poland for good now.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you we went to the beach today. My parents, Zofijka, me, and uncle and aunt, from Dad’s side. But, turns out, we’re incredibly lucky. We’ve been having an incredibly hot week, but due to various things happening we couldn’t go to the beach earlier, so we just waited for Sunday to come. and, as soon as we came to the beach, the rain started falling. We were all wet and me and Zofijka were feeling very cold and now we both have sore throat, I hope we won’t be sick. 😀 Moreover, when we came home, got rid of all the mud we’ve brought in, showered and stuff, the clouds disappeared and it’s hot again, only more humid. Isn’t that a pure luck? 😀 Mum has some sort of ear infection, I actually was telling her not to go to the beach with it as it could only get worse, and it looks like it did get worse, she’s barely hearing on that ear. She tried using geranium for it and other home remedies, but looks like our lifestyle guru will have to see a laryngologist, probably tomorrow.

And if we were having coffee I’d tell you that Mum went to a coeliac disease specialist last Wednesday, but it looks like her referral didn’t get through to them. So now she’ll go to another one that can see her much quicker, on Tuesday, and without a referral. So she’ll have a real health week. But I hope the news she’ll get will be good.

What would you tell me if we were having coffee? 🙂

 

A shitty, Zombie day.

Yeah, today I have another Zombie day, which means, if you’re unfamiliar, that I’m after a night of completely no sleep. I think the reason of my sleep being so poor recently is that I’m significantly anxious over many things. A bit more than a week ago my term exam session started, which is always some stress – almost none in comparison to final exams that I’ll have in May, but still, makes me quite tense. Besides, almost at the same time my brother picked up some tummy bug or something and was sick, with vomiting and all the attractions, which obviously triggered my emetophobia. It lasted for very long for him and then Dad got infected too and it lasted very long too, so I was freaking out literally, because they were sick and because I could get sick and anyone else could. I didn’t get it luckily, but still don’t fully know if it’s actually over for them. Moreover, my Mum had gastroscopy and colonoscopy on Tuesday before Easter. Well it didn’t regard me directly, but still it made me feel anxious for some reason, I almost felt like I myself was going to have gastroscopy, which would be just traumatic for me I guess and I was stressed for Mum. Don’t know why I reacted so strongly for it. And then Mum had also some not serious complications after that which contributed to my anxiety. It’s crazy. and my final exams are in a month now, which is the thing I’m most anxious about currently. It’s not only about the exams themselves and whether I’ll pass them, but also about the circumstances in which I’ll be writing them. I’m not sure whether I finally told you or not, I guess I did, but I won’t take them at my own school that I formally go to. My school is a normal, mainstream school and my Mum was kind of afraid I might not get all the adjustments I could get if I’d write at a special school for the blind, especially as for math, as this is the subject I particularly suck at and is very difficult for me. I agree with it and so my Mum came up with the idea she’ll ask the headmistress of one of the schools for the blind – not the one I was going to as a child, a completely different one – if it would be possible for me to write there. There was a lot of paperwork and other stuff involved, but it was possible and I got the permission finally. But this school, although is much closer than the one I was going to, is still quite far from where I live, in a different region. So we would have to stay in the boarding school. I know, I won’t be there on my own, there will be Mum and maybe Zofijka with me, I will live with them and the circumstances will be completely different, we’ll be out of there most of the time, I desperately try to think rationally about it, but the anxiety is still there. I know it’s so irrational and stupid and all, but it doesn’t seem like I could do much about it now. I’ll probably just have to face it and see if it was worth all that anxiety or not. Also, I’m having lots of nasty dreams recently, with sleep paralysis and without and they scare me so so much. Just last week I had sleep paralysis twice. It’s knackering and makes me feel just helpless. Often such dreams leave me anxious for hours after they pass away. So yeah plenty of issues that may contribute to that lack of sleep.

Luckily I didn’t have to do anything important today, apart from preparing to my History exam which I’ll have on Monday, but it wasn’t hard to do and I actually could do it tomorrow as well if I really needed. I feel absolutely crappy today, with no energy (despite three strong coffees), lots of anxiety and depression, but that’s normal I guess for everyone who didn’t sleep for an entire night, or at least it’s my normal when I don’t sleep properly, the more tat other things get in the way.

Recently I was writing that I plan on buying a new Braille-Sense, and it turned out that it’s time now for applying for funding, so I did some of that endless paperwork with Mum. Well I guess don’t have much more to say now. Just had to rant a bit.

How are you guys doing? 🙂

TMI Tuesday.

1. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, your future, what would you want to know?

What am I going to do in future? Where does it all actually go… well, pretty abstractive thing, but I just ask it myself so often. Also, I’d like to know why do I have such strange, weird, just soooo hideous and frightening dreams every time I get sleep paralysis? I just had such a “blissful” night last night, which left me very anxious and wondering what actually causes such weird dreams, and that is why I’m still up at 2 AM, I’m just too scared to go to sleep and I think I’ll go when I feel really sleepy, because then I’ll be too tired to have dreams. Actually I’m scared of staying up as well, but that’s better of both these options and I can always distract. Another thing I would like to know is something more about my past, like, why do so many things cause me so much anxiety like I had some awful memories with them or something, but in fact can’t recall anything? I think that actually there are more things that I don’t know about myself and my life than those I know, and even if I know something, I am very often not sure about it when I start to think about it more. Sounds a bit weird, but true. But that’s another thing, overthinking. 😀

2. What do you value most in your sex life?

I didn’t start my sex life yet and don’t think I’ll have any opportunity soon, but anyway I know what I would value in my sex life. I’d definitely value if my husband had some imagination as for sex. I think I’d have, so it would be even better if we both would. I always value creativeness, no matter in which area of life. I would value if we had the same values as for sex, or would be able to accept each other values. Like I am a practitioning Christian and I surely wouldn’t have to have a boyfriend or a fiancee who would desperately want to have sex before anything else. First I need to get to know you more before you start to finger me, second if you respect me, we should marry first. I would also appreciate if he’d be understanding because I have often issues with people touching me and sometimes intimate situations just scare the hell out of me, but if we got each other’s perspective, I think I would get over it with time.

3. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

I feel like there are different kinds of jokes and while humour is generally a good thing, in some areas we should definitely use it carefully and use milder jokes, that wouldn’t be hurtful for others. But I don’t think there are such things that are completely FORBIDDEN to be joked about. Or maybe they are, but I just can’t think of such right now. I think things like death, or very serious illnesses, should be treated with a lot of carefulness. But sometimes a mild joke may discharge the uncomfortable situation. The thing is just to be careful and had a healthy distance to things and to yourself, and be perceptive if others do have it or not.

4. If you had to move to a state or country besides the one in which you currently live, where would you move and why?

I have many favourite countries which I like equally and I’d visit eagerly, but I think I wouldn’t like to move to just any of them. I think I could most eagerly move t the UK, but somewhere to the countryside rather than to cities like London. This country just somehow resonates with me. I think it would be the best if I could move to North Wales, it is so beautiful there, people have such a lovely accent and I could practice my Welsh. I think Finland would be also absolutely great to live in.

5. Are you too nice?

It happens. Usually when I don’t like someone, or don’t feel comfortable around them. It also depends in what we mean by “too nice”. Sometimes I could say I’m maybe too nice for someone I like and want to for example do something nice for them and then it turns out my efforts were actually pointless, as they either don’t care or want to take advantage of me being nice to them in future. So usually now, if I like someone, I’m rather distant towards them, just to not lose them immediately, but it also depends on the case of course.

Bonus: Falling in love is… (one word only) a rollercoaster.

https://tmituesdayblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/26/tmi-tuesday-march-27-2018/

Song of the day – Alex Kunnari ft. Tim Hilberts – Wake Me Up.

Hi! 🙂

Today’s song really speaks to me. I found it on Spotify last year. Those of you who use Spotify probably know their Daily Mixes with music you like and some new stuff in the same vibe. So back then I was listening one of mine, which had mostly Norwegian electronica in it, as I listened to it a lot at that time. And then this song played and I was rather surprised. It wasn’t really my style musically. Well, honestly, it wasn’t my style at all. And after all Alex Kunnari doesn’t really sound very Norwegian, rather Finnish (well unless he’s from Finnmark), so I was wondering a bit why it landed here. But then I started to listen to the lyrics and it suddenly caught my full attention. Oh gosh, what is this guy singing about? It sounds like… pretty much like me. :O What there was “like me” was the fact that I could relate to this song with my night experiences, which as I know now is sleep paralysis, and false awakenings. But back then, although I’ve been struggling with these and other sleep sensations regularly as long as I can remember and was very frustrated every time it happened, I didn’t have the name for it, didn’t know anyone who had it and what even more frustrating, couldn’t quite describe to anyone the content of these dreams and how it felt to have it in general. And so I felt a bit comforted hearing this, as I felt like if there’s song about it, there must be someone else on Earth, even just one person, experiencing this in one way or another too. That didn’t change anything in the grand scheme of things, but at least lessened my feeling of inadequacy which I think is strong enough in other areas of my life. So I really like this song now. 🙂

I just “loove” weird, scary dreams.

So as I wrote yesterday, today it is my Dad’s name day. We expected quite a lot of people to come in, my Mum’s and Dad’s family and Dad’s friend, but it’s a few minutes after seven now as I’m starting to write this and as for now only my aunt with her family visited us late in the afternoon and now there is Dad’s coworker and I think that will be all, and, to be honest, I am happy about that and my Mum is too, although we are both happy for different reasons. I am happy as I hate crowds and all related things, my Mum is happy because she won’t have to make as much food as she thought she’d have too.

I’m having quite a good day today and it would be really great if not my leg, which is still burning, and very poor sleep I had last night. Straight after I wrote yesterday’s post, I went to bed, just to lie for a while with Misha, as I was really tired of all that pain and all and maybe nap for half an hour or so. But I fell asleep and slept really heavily so that didn’t even hear poor Misha meowing to let him out, but luckily my Dad did. Finally my Mum woke me up at 11 PM asking me if I am going to sleep the whole night through in my dress and day clothes ’cause she doesn’t really think it is a good idea lol. As it wasn’t my intention and I also didn’t think it’s a very good idea, I showered and had a cup of tea, but then was awoken for too long I guess to fall in such heavy sleep again. So after some time I gave up and started to play with Misha, who is in a very friendly mood now again and acts really weird as for him and seems almost overly sociable. 😀 I can’t figure him out, I think. We both finally fell asleep around four, but now I think I could as well stay awake until all the civilised people in my time zone will wake up too, ’cause as soon as I fell asleep, I fell in the swirl of totally weird, scary and exhausting dreams with some extra attractions like sleep paralysis and false awakenings, I don’t know how many of them I had, but really really many and some part of my brain which stayed more or less conscious all the time when I was having these dreams was wondering whether actually I will ever wake up for sure.

It was like dozens of pretty realistic scenarios of my day, but each of them was very dark and scary, even though seemed normal, but everything around felt so incredibly gloomy and ominous and there always was a moment when suddenly lots of creepy things started to happen, most often pretty speciffic things, but I don’t feel very comfortable talking about it in detail, and deep down I always knew that actually I am still sleeping, but once those creepy things started to happen I knew it for sure. There were often moments I wanted to wake up or test whether it’s a dream or reality, but I either couldn’t move or my brain was playing tricks on me or everything was too foggy. I wanted to scream, but I know I didn’t, even though I dreamed I did but just no one heard me. I wanted to do so ’cause I thought then someone will come and wake me up. I was probably much more scared in all these dreams than it was worth it, I always am, in these dreams I was even thinking that now I will always be really afraid to fall asleep and wondered if I will ever truly believe I woke up, I was more frustrated and exhausted when I finally woke up, than scared and I often have much more scary dreams, but still, it was scary and I am glad Misha was with me, even though I didn’t think of it while having these dreams and I don’t think it could help me if I knew it then, but, you know, when you wake up and you realise you wasn’t physically completely alone in all that, it makes a slight, but comforting difference. Even though Misha wasn’t conscious at all what’s going on with me and I suppose no one would be. I hate waking up alone after such shit.

So it was half past seven when they finally let me alone and then Misha wanted to go out so I let him, but I was very exhausted after those dreams so I took a risk and decided to try to get back to sleep and maybe get some healthy sleep.

I didn’t have dreams like that, but I know I dreamed about something which frightened me, but it wasn’t any form of lucid dream luckily now, so I don’t remember it. But I didn’t really feel well-rested when I woke up. I slept until nine, but as I said I feel like I could as well not sleep at all. Hope tonight it will be better.

My Mum wanted to go shopping with Zofijka and I decided to go with them ’cause otherwise I would be home alone just with Misha, my Dad was working outside and Olek was at work. I like to be home alone, I really enjoy it, but I truly hate it when I’m particularly anxious or had some scary dreams. So we went for some groceries and bought a present for Dad, Zofijka wanted to buy some books and I went with my Mum to our mobile network operator to change my phone number. I felt like I needed to do it for some time already, just for safety reasons, as I have a friend from my school who was getting on my nerves recently, calling me or writing to me on every possible communicator and wanting me to do different things for her. I mean, it’s not like I don’t like helping people or it bothers me if people want a lot from me, but it was like she couldn’t accept I have other things in life of more importance to do than make her happy and be always available for her, she always seemed very hurt when I couldn’t or didn’t want to do something for her, and I felt like she takes a lot of people’s helpfullness for granted. Plus I don’t have good memories from the school and she just loved to talk about it and recall old, in her view, good times whenever we were talking. So at some point I realised that for my own well-being I definitely need to cut her off. And so I did. And life seems much more peaceful now, and although I feel a lot of sympathy for her, because she seems to be a very lonely person and I suppose I hurt her, I don’t regret my decision much, I never felt close enough to her to regret it. One thing I regret is that with cutting her off, I had to cut off or limit contacts with some other people from the same environment, with whom I maybe wasn’t best friends, but we liked each other. But I know they wouldn’t understand why I feel so uncomfortable around that girl and why I want to avoid her. Sometimes unfortunately it is so that when you make a choice and you know it is right, some of the consequences might be a bit hard, but as I said, none of those folks were my best friends, they were just nice people I liked and who as I suppose liked me in return. Luckily we don’t close to each other with that girl, we are in two different part of the country, so technically cutting her off was very easy.

When we got home I did a few Welsh lessons and I absorbed quite a lot of vocabulary today which I am proud of.

I also spent quite a lot of time with Zofijka and Misha.

I hope you all are having a nice Saturday.

Oh wow, I would never believe that writing a simple post will take me so much time! :O It’s already after 10 PM. But I always multitask and did a lot in the meantime, so I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. Sometimes when I was writing some longer posts with some of my more complex musings for my Polish blogs, writing the whole post could take me even a few days, so it’s my normal, I guess.

I think I’ll soon be off to sleep, so wish me good luck. 😉 I hope this night won’t be so scary and Misha will be so good and sleep with me. And I wish nice dreams to all of you who will go to sleep soon as well.