and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

I was unsure last night. Wasn't quite myself. Had half awake fits where I decided weird things were happening to my bedroom. Broken ceiling. Leaning wall. Structurally unsound. Dangerous, even. The last thing you want to happen to you as you sleep is to have your bedroom wall fall on you.. especially when you imagine that bedroom wall heavy enough to crush your tiny little heart.

I got up and stepped back. Protected my interests, my tiny little heart, and starred bleary-eyed at the wall. I tried to push it back, align it a little better with the other walls so maybe I could act normal if someone burst through my door at 4 AM expecting to catch me not being normal.. because that would normally happen.

Sleep walking is kind of like being on drugs. You can get used to it but the paranoia never truly goes away.. and it's unfounded paranoia, too. It makes no sense. Your arms didn't fall off. What are you worrying about?

So I pushed the wall a little bit and looked at my bed and it looked normal. I turned the light on and starred, probably 2 or 3 minutes straight, at the angled ceiling above my pillows to see if it was moving at all.. even a tiny millimeter.. anything. It stayed put. I reasoned with the little child part of my brain while the angry part paced back and forth in a fury, just out of range.

5 AM - I sat bolt upright in bed. I'd been talking to someone but no one was there. I don't know what I was saying or how important it was but I looked, wide-eyed, around the room to make sure no one was laughing.

These are the problems with bringing people into your life.. into your bed. It's willingly showing one's shortcomings, airing one's laundry. What if you do say things in your sleep? Not just mumbling jibberish but real fears and needs and wants? What if they find out? What if they know?

At some point they're going to think you're pretty crazy for trying to push the wall back into place at 4 AM like you have no other choice. They will think your attempts to blend into the farm scene by quacking like a duck is lunatic material. They will, undoubtably, laugh.

Laugh. Don't get me wrong, it's some of the funniest shit in the world to see. Dead people doing dead things, acting alive. That's what sleep really is - it's like a temporary sabbatical into that other world. And to see people, asleep - dead really, acting out very alive things, it's crazy. It's side-show circus at it's best. They are dead but they are alive.. alive but dead. Dead to the world anyway.

But in a vunerable state, just awake from having slept walk, it's like becoming a child all over again. A child can't understand why his parent is mad at him, why they are laughing and pointing. A child can't make any more sense of these things than to become paranoid. Ball up, run away, hide. These are the things a child knows to do.

Next morning - relate a story. It's fine. Everyone is awake and understanding. The actions make little sense, but that makes sense, because they were sleep walking. It's funny now, and funny for everyone. Funny even for the sleepwalker, the sleeptalker, and the daydreamer.

It's funny now.