Since January, I’ve been back in a bad sleeping cycle and nightmares have been plaguing me. For a little while, I thought it had gotten better but I’ve had to start wearing my football tops again to mitigate night sweats (pro tip, if you’re waking up from sweating excessively at night).
As a result of my worsening nights, I’m struggling to start my day and have a positive outlook on life. I’m obviously more tired and I’m dreading to go to sleep. But being awake currently isn’t so great either. Still, I’m doing so much better than before. I’m not actually in despair, but it’s okay to recognise that I’m still not quite happy either.
Yesterday morning I woke up at 5 am and couldn’t fall back asleep until about 6:30. And when I did I fell straight into a dream.
The first dream
In the dream, I was visiting my parental home with Mistress. My parents weren’t there but everything had been left exactly as it was the last day I was there. There were other people, as there was going to be some sort of event but in my dream I was also struggling to sleep.
Mistress and I were in my bedroom and sleeping in my single bed. Then at around 6 am, Mistress woke up, decided it was morning and said she was going to say hi to her partner upstairs. She would be back in a few minutes though and told me to be ready for some sort of play. When she left, she gave me a big bag of sweets, to hold onto.
Time passed and it was taking a long time before Mistress came back. Meanwhile, I was struggling to stay awake as my tiredness seemed to have finally caught up with me. I started drifting in and out of sleep but every time I fell asleep I landed in a nightmare. To keep myself awake I started eating some candy, since the motion of eating tends to help keep you awake.
More and more time passed and I became a bit worried about what was taking Mistress so long. The room had started growing darker and shadows had started passing outside my bedroom door.
I began thinking how odd it was that Mistress gave me a bag of candy. She’d been keeping me on track to eat more healthily, after all. Suddenly I had the realisation that it was incredibly strange and very nearly impossible that Mistress would have slept with me in the same bed. She would have told me to sleep on the floor next to her, and I instantly became aware that I’d been trapped.
Something bad was going to come for me, and this “Mistress” persona had just tried to trick me into staying in this room. I realised I was dreaming and so the dream broke.
Back in my bedroom
I woke up in my real bedroom where I remembered previously struggling to fall asleep. My bed looked exactly as it should, just like the rest of my room. This time though, I was struggling to stay awake, falling in and out of sleep. That feeling when you’ve been awoken by your alarm clock but instantly drift back off even though subconsciously you want to also fight it.
I could kind of see myself lying in bed from above, while simultaneously being pulled into a nightmare as I fell back asleep.
I forced myself awake and went back into my own perspective; I was looking at my room from my own body again. Suddenly I realised this was still a dream and I had never been awake at all. I told myself to wake up but at once, my body stiffened completely and I could no longer move.
A dark figure started appearing at the end of my bed.
I tried to turn the lights on with my remote control but it didn’t work. Then manually tried to flick my bedside lamp on but it didn’t turn on.
The figure took shape.
Finally the fright of the realisation and my inability to move allowed me to wake up. This time, the lights did turn on in my room and I knew I was actually awake.
Mistress
I didn’t dare to go back to sleep and decided to write a message to Mistress instead. I wrote about the dream, knowing that putting it down in reality would help me settle and calm down. But when I finished writing it I didn’t send her the message; I thought it may be too long and it’s never really interesting to hear about other people’s dreams.
I played my first football match of the year in the early afternoon and came home feeling absolutely exhausted. Truth be told, that feeling is what I like about it but after a break it takes a little bit of agony to get back into it. Mistress and her partner came over not too long after to have a meeting about the upcoming films we want to film. I wrapped myself in a blanket and laid down on the floor in an attempt to give my back some relief from the pain. I didn’t think this was that out of the ordinary.
When we finished our meeting Mistress mentioned that I seemed cold and opened her arms to welcome me to a hug. I thought she was going to get up next, but she surprised me by asking me if I wanted her to stay for a little bit.
“But you’re both tired. Don’t you want to go home?” I said.
She replied that she’d noticed I wasn’t doing okay. Her partner added that I tend to talk less when he’s around and that he would be happy to give us some time alone; they’d already talked about this when they’d gone to the toilet. Wait… yes, I remember you wanting to go to the toilet at the same time earlier but didn’t register that you’d actually gone at the same time.
I admitted that I wasn’t doing so well and that it’d be nice if we could chat but that maybe we should just schedule another time because… they were tired.
“I want to make sure you’re okay,” Mistress said. And so, her partner left and Mistress stayed with me to have a chat.
Feeling touched
I was really surprised that they’d seen through me so easily. In a way, when I’m not okay it’s always been this well guarded secret because I don’t want to bother anyone else. Now, apparently, Mistress really knows me well enough to see when I don’t even notice that she has.
I was really touched that they both noticed and made the active effort to ensure I would be okay. It’s perhaps silly to say but no one ever did this as I was growing up. I’m so used to just “being okay” on my own, because that’s always what I had to do.
One of the things Mistress asked me is if I ever felt just happy. To be honest, it’s a question that’s a little confusing for me to answer. I remember taking MDMA for the first time and thinking wow, so this is what it feels like to be happy?! I had forgotten! And as I thought about that, I couldn’t match that feeling with any other feeling I’ve had since.
I said that I was no longer depressed though; at least not as badly as I once was and that’s true. But Mistress remarked that there are different intensities of depression and that maybe it’s still constantly here, just different and I suppose she’s indeed right.
But maybe a really big difference is that I’m no longer alone, nowadays. And I know that things will continue to get better overtime.
Xx Mila