Damage

The joy of a bed

Have a bath, smooth out some clean sheets, then feel the moment of joy as you splay your legs and arms beneath the covers - ready to purge the mind of things it thinks it has no future need for. It will then condense and sort the remainder. Failure to do this results in confusion and tiredness throughout the days to follow. While you are fast asleep, you are oblivious to the billions of others beavering away. You are dead to the world each night. However, the world can toy with your dreams. They can be shifted in a new direction by a light touch or unusual sounds.

Getting off to sleep can be a struggle for some. I find it very hard if I have any kind of dialogue going on in my head. If you start considering what you want to say and imagine people’s probable responses, you are likely to be doing so well into the night. Thus, we can say to ourselves that this issue can be dealt with tomorrow, no need to think about it right now. We can force a routine, a thinking path that helps us drift off. The same thought path works each night. A yarn of your own making that you talk yourself through. There may be a stigma attached to sleeping by oneself, alone. It is in fact a fashion that comes and goes but of course relies on having a home with enough rooms for that to be possible. Sleeping alongside someone is a joy too when that someone is rather lovable. However, being sleep disturbed for years on end, by snoring, fidgeting etc can dampen our happiness.

Do you judge people by the hour in which they prise themselves out of bed? Are late risers lazy, and early ones schemers? During spells of working late, well past midnight, I would not get up very early. People were keen to admonish me for it. People also think that you can adjust your body clock to anytime that you want. Try getting up three hours earlier than normal. Most get a feeling of utter inner tiredness as their body temperature remains out of sync with their activities. We may endeavour to fit in with society but need not follow the same precise pattern as everyone else. We do the same but in a different order or at a different time in the day.

Our dreams are sometimes related to the goings on in our life. I was plagued by nightmares for years. I would experience a small horror, then a bigger one. I felt the relief if it was to be a small horror, but well aware that a large one may soon follow. Whilst semi-incomprehensible, it was vivid. I felt the sheer terror of archers firing arrows at my face resulting in mounds of bubbling gunk. Many years passed before I realised that these correlated to some small mistake or large thing I had done wrong. The fear of failure. Pressure from inflexible characters. Only a new life away from home allowed these to fade. I still live through bad dreams, but they take a different form and only occur when too hot or after eating excessively spiced food late in the evening. The worst: semi-awake but can’t move. At the back of the neck there is a shut off mechanism and if that is not switched fully one can spend a few frustrating minutes trying to re-engage the body. Semi-awake, semi asleep.

The less pleasant dreams are dwarfed by the rather marvellous ones. Flying high and moving in ways that reality can’t compete with. No mention of the personal encounters with imaginary folk need writing about apart from to say that they were as good as those in everyday life. The frequent dreams of being in elevators trying hopelessly to get to a desired level, sometimes using stairs as a get around, don’t seem to have any notable point. Lifts that move sideways and in manners outside of typical engineering possibilities add to the experience. Some might say that is because you are trying to go up in life or find workarounds but as they say that to everyone their dream analysis is probably dreamt up.

Symptoms, solutions and causes. We are more interested in finding solutions than causes. The solution to bed wetting is nappies regardless of age or bedding to handle the urine. The cause maybe stress or pressure from demanding parents – having too great expectations. Most will stick to solutions and not tackle the cause believing that a child will grow out of it. Often the symptoms change, reinforcing the belief that all is fine.