filled with sushi and a vague wave of confusion

Stuffed full of homemade sushi and merlot after a long day, but scared to go to bed because the past three nights have been one horrific nightmare after the next. (*although, the sushi and vino part was awesome. It was a nice but weirdly anxious/somewhat lonely 3-day weekend, which ended with a sweet spontaneous dinner party with Justin, Dani, Ekki & Justin's friend Derek. Sushi is the best thing ever. 3 mile run... hours of eating... meh. Works for me!)

So... alas... I'm stalling and checking email and blah blah blah.

There are many perfect antidotes for nightmares-- including Tom, who's a damn fine diversion and a very good sport. This weekend, he kept me company and let me indulge in Thai food,deep chats, a bottle of shitty champagne, and even brought over Season 1 of Mad Men, which is actually as awesome as everyone said. He let me talk out my angst and be angry and even cry on the down-low without making me feel like an @sshole, because Tom is the best friend ever and because he knows that sometimes you just get overwhelmed and need to cry and pretend you're fine when really you're hiding behind the sink wiping mascara off your face as you fake looking for a bottle opener or whatever.

I digress.
Tom left after our little NetFlixFest ended and I was totally confident that 2 days of some of the *worst* nightmares I've had (yes, even for me) were going to end, but alas... not so much.
The nightmares the past 3 days were just gruesome. To the point that I feel like I'm a bad person.
In one, I toss and turn in covers just to realize that the covers are an albino mental patient-- white skin, white fruit-of-the-loom t-shirt, white pajama pants, white hair. The mental patient wraps his body around my face and I start to suffocate. I flail, start to scream, then stop to preserve the air that remains in my lungs. The mental patient hisses and holds onto my face with his whole torso. I escape and try running out into the snow in bare feet, wishing that I had found my car keys or my cell phone as any form of protection. I run, become exhausted. The mental patient presses his body against the window and watches me, confident that I will crumple from exhaustion into the snow in time for him to catch up with me and end my life. I know that he will win.

In another, I am digging for weapons of mass destruction somewhere in England. The ground is clammy... thick black sod (peat-- from Ireland and my scotch obsession?)... the smell of phosphorous and ominous chemicals fills the air. "Oh, SHIT..." the CIA-whoever leader says. We unearth train tracks. Then a small cavernous bubble under the train tracks, like the little hidey-holes that people hope for when miners get trapped under the earth. Under the train tracks there's a baby in a little onesie outfit. He's covered in wet mud, eyes rolling back in his head, spit-up on his pajamas. I freak out and start crying hysterically. The rest of the 'excavators' look at me in disgust and start chanting. The baby is dead, and then alive, and then dead, and I'm in a full-out panic trying to dig him out. People start chanting in tongues, like in a Pentacostal church. I turn and run, crying, sick... I run into the house and watch the rest of the coverage on CNN as I hide behind an armchair and pretend that I'm not one of the scientists interviewed on the scene, despite the fact that they put my name on a lower third graphic and have me sign a release form on the air.

Totally f***** up, right?
Mostly it's the same recurring nightmare.
I dream about whatever it is that people dream, and as I'm waking up, I get scared to the point that the hair stands up on my arms and a cold wave of adrenaline shoots through my body.
I wake up with that pounding feeling in the hands and chest that you get when waking up from a terrible dream.
I look at my clock. I clutch the covers or my pillow, or simply tuck my thumb under my fingers and try to remind myself that I'm ok.
I look towards the door that leads to my bathroom.
Out of the blackness and the shadows, I discern a man's outline standing in the doorway.
I start shaking. Sometimes, if I'm really half-asleep, I'll say something meaningless and pathetic. "hello?" or "go away".
The shadow remains.
Every time, he raises one arm and braces it against the door frame.
I wait until morning.

Ohhhh, the life of the overactive imagination girl.
I really, really, really wish I could get these twisted dreams out of my brain.
I'm considering hiring someone to sleep over. Just for another breathing, sleeping body in the house. I think having another warm body around would take the edge off of my 4am fear. Like having a pet-- how they say people's blood pressure is significantly lowered if they have a dog or a cat around.
Not that I consider a pet a replacement for human contact...
or that I need someone hanging around the house to cure my bachelorette blues...

anyway. I'm stalling. I have to be up in exactly 7 hours, so I'm going to be a grown-up and go to bed.

sighhhh...
cheers to a great day off, with friends and new running shoes and awesome sushi and the best damn coffee in the whole damn state.

sweet dreams, and cheers on the eve of President elect Obama's inaguration...

-jane kathryn, prisoner to her own imagination