I keep having bad dreams.
Not even interesting bad dreams. I have been having the most boring bad dreams imaginable.
Last night, I was doing my taxes for hours – adding figures, calculating things out, entering form numbers.
The two nights prior to that, I spent all night researching nurseries for Rose, making calls, and doing visits. I woke up exhausted.
These dreams feel like they are devoid of meaning – just an endless continuation of the tasks that are occupying my days. At least a nightmare feels like it contains symbols that can point to greater meaning and self-insight. This is just a slog of menial tasks.
But I wondered – is there a meaning if I look a bit deeper? There must be…
I think it might be that I am so overwhelmed by the enormity of trying to keep up with life that mundane tasks are consuming my inner life. And it is essentially eating me alive.
It feels like I have lost my ability to dream.
As someone who has always had vivid, rather peculiar dreams, that feels just a step short of devastating.
There have been so many times where I have told my inner life to be quiet, to get out of the way so that practical work can be done.
This is magnified by my need to feel – and look – capable, and functional, and ‘normal’, whatever that means at this point.
This must just be a misguided effort to get more control over my life. Instead, it is just shutting down my imagination.
Giving so much of my attention to these little things must be serving some kind of valuable distraction, protecting me from having to think about the bigger issues that are troubling me as I work to rebuild my life.
At least I should be grateful I’m sleeping, since insomnia has been a regular friend. But I cannot wait to break out of this cycle.
Am I the only one who has had really boring bad dreams? I would be interested to know…
Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash