Sleep Is My Refuge These Days

Being stuck at home has put me in touch with both sides of myself: the better angels of my nature and my cruel, analytical, judgmental side.

 

Trust me: I’m not liking  my second side  at all.

 

And it only manifests when I’m awake. I guess that’s the good news.

 

The bad news is that it manifests at all. This is something relatively new to me.

 

Interesting, that!

 

I’ve never been an individual who has nightmares, so sleep has never been a downer to me. In dreams, I fly, I float, I act, I sing, I dance, I’m free to be who my essence is.

 

During these recent troubling times — not just the COVID-19 crisis, but ever since Trump became POTUS, and ever since I found out what a douche bag the DNC and DEM party is when it comes to Bernie Sanders (a better Democrat than most Democrats these days) and The Squad (progressive Democrats) — I find myself really pissed off when I’m awake.

 

I mean, it’s like I’m on a tear.  I wish ill of people in power and their enablers and followers (even when their followers are friends and relatives!). I want them to pay for their blind obedience to their Fuhrers and their storm troopers.

 

This is NOT healthy, and I realize it.  I just can’t seem to stop getting “set off” (like having a brand new car “keyed”)  every single day–sometimes every single hour–by some new outrage Trump and his minions and enablers or corporate DEMS say or do. It just infuriates me!

 

To survive Trumpsters and Trumpism, I think (and sometimes say) shitty stuff like, “Go ahead, folks, keep listening to,  believing and obeying him. Go back to work next week, keep spreading the virus far and wide (among yourselves). If you do that, there will be a lot fewer voters on your side come November!”

 

Then I think of the old adage, “Hatred/anger/fear is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” 

And the Cherokee teaching about the two wolves that live in each of us:

One wolf is evil, the old man tells his grandson. It is anger, envy, greed, arrogance and sadness. It’s the feeling of inferiority and the ego.

The other wolf  is kindness, joy, love, hope, serenity, humility, compassion and peace.

“Which one will survive?” the grandson finally asks.

“The one you feed.”

 

So, since I’ve discovered that when I’m asleep, my good wolf prevails, I’m spending a lot more time in bed, sleeping and dreaming.

 

Tonight so far (between 5 pm and 1 a.m.), I’ve dreamed of floating in clouds over a vast expense of ocean, being lost but above it all, and seeing an island off in the distance and thinking, “I think I’ll go over there and take a look…” so I waft my way over to the island (using hand motions to paddle my way in the right direction), and spot a handful of campers/vacationers on the beaches (spread out, of course, nothing like spring break in Florida recently) doing their own thing but looking serene and happy, so I drop in off my cloud and “join” them (at a COVID-19 safe distance) and we smile at each other without saying a word. Just sharing silent love and support. Waving!

 

In the next dream, I’m about to take the stage to do Man of La Mancha with a cast who, like me, hasn’t been able to have  a single rehearsal!  I’m feeling confident as hell anyway, because I’ve seen the movie and pay at least a dozen times and I know just about every line and lyric. All I’m hoping for is one full dress rehearsal before we go “live” that evening so I can assure myself that everyone else is as ready as I am to knock the audience’s socks off.

 

I launch into Aldonza’s song about being “spawned in a ditch by a mother who left me there…hoping I’d have the good sense to die” even though, to my knowledge, I’m not playing her role. (In the dream, I don’t know which role I’ll be playing, but I’m prepared to play any of them!)

 

The person who hears me belting out the song (a fellow cast member) starts crying because I’m delivering it so well that she can feel Aldonza’s agony and anger…and I’m thinking, “I was born for this role… but I’m not sexy enough… and I was born to be Don Quixote or Sancho Panza but my breasts aren’t gone yet… but look at me go!”  and I launch into songs that those characters sing in the play.

 

I’m having a ball, doing it all!

 

It’s no wonder I prefer being asleep these days!!!

 

When I’m asleep, I’m the good wolf, the person I recognize from “before” I woke up and found the world (and my country, and my party) so at odds with what I thought they were.

 

Mark Twain’s refrain occurs to me a lot these days (and has for several years now): “People call me a pessimist in my old age but I’m not. I am an optimist who did not arrive.”

 

BINGO!!!

 

But when I’m asleep, I arrive!

 

Thank God for sleep..and forgetfulness…and the good wolf that lives inside me.

 

I’d be utterly lost without them right now.