I woke up with my heart racing and slightly stunned. It wasn't a nightmare as such, I had one of those a few months back where I did actually cry out in fear in my sleep. This was during the bleakest time in my self worth and scared t'mrs more than it did me. No, this was more of an anxiety dream.
Anxiety dreams I am sure effect different people in different ways. Some people, for example, have that one where they are naked in public. For me that is not anxiety provoking, indeed I quite enjoy those dreams. I have two kinds of anxiety dreams which are probably quite common. One involves heights: I am never falling in these dreams but more likely perched somewhere up high and too frightened to move. In other versions I find myself in unlikely situations like flying a plane or on a roller-coaster. I suffer from vertigo in real life; only yesterday a cliff edge scene in the film I was watching made me recoil; so you will NOT find me willingly on a roller-coaster or bungee jumping or hang-gliding or any of these things some of you maniacs do. The height part of dreams are often involved in nocturnal thoughts that are otherwise quite nice and are barely a distraction from the rest of the dream.
The other anxiety dream I have quite often is about being late or more specifically being late and no matter what I do to try and get to where I am going, find myself getting more and more delayed and no nearer to getting there. I gather these dreams are quite common among fairly normal people so not necessarily down to my being a nutter. I've had these kinds of dreams since my school days.
In the dream last night I was due to be flying to Hamburg and I woke up late having not set my alarm; indeed already too late for the flight. Then everything went wrong. I couldn't find my passport. I couldn't find the tickets. All of the clothes I wanted to wear were still dirty in the suitcase from my last trip (in which case they would have been there for four years!) and I had no money for the train to the airport. Of course this is all nonsense.
I have a real issue about punctuality; I can't bear to be late myself and it irks me terribly when others are late. My travelling companion to Hamburg, Charlie, is at least as anal as me in regards to timekeeping if not more so and there is absolutely no chance we will not be at Gatwick two hours before our flight leaves. The alarm WILL be set, in fact we will probably have an alarm each ready. We will both have suitcases packed in advance and hand luggage replete with passport and tickets ready to grab. Wifey has already agreed to drive us to Gatwick and is aware at how early we will want to leave (5am!). Short of some natural disaster we are not going to be late. We will be too early to check our luggage in when we arrive at the airport so will have to wait around, we will literally be the first on our flight to do so and thus the last to get our luggage at the other end and will have to wait around for two hours before we can board our flight except it will be three hours because the flight will be late. So I'll end up having a pint or two and will then want a nap in the afternoon.
There here follows a gap of several days where I forgot I hadn't finished this blog because I've actually been busy!
Yes, several days have passed and not two nights ago I had a very disturbing dream. In this dream I'd had a skull transplant. No, I don't know how that would work in real life either but it didn't actually happen in real life, it was a dream, so sue me. The operation had left me bald and disfigured and with massive cranial scarring. Something then went wrong and a massive bulge appeared on the side of my already malformed head and I was told this was a tumour. Did I wake up in a fevered sweat, panting with relief? No, I woke up quite normally and thought "that was a weird dream" and that was it.
So what do I feel anxious about? Surely as a privileged, white male I have everything I could ever want? Yes, I suppose I do have a home, a job and food on the table so my lot is not a truly awful one. But I am a born worrier. To tell me not to worry would be like to tell me not to have brown eyes; I do and I will. I am prone to stress, anxiety and depression. I am not proud of this, I do not feel it makes me more interesting and I do not believe as some do that only intelligent people get depression. I believe that perhaps the more intelligent people are likely to recognize depression as an illness and get it treated rather than lashing out at society. Stephen Fry has recently admitted to a suicide attempt and in his admission said what I believe; clinical depression is an illness and there is not necessarily any reason for it. People in the past have said to me "what have you got to be depressed about?"; they may as well ask what I have to have Colitis about. Or what someone else may have to have diabetes about. Wankers.
As a subtext, people who try to tell other people they have nothing to be depressed about are usually trying to let us know how they have it much worse but don't complain about it. I meet people like this a lot; "I have such a terrible time but I never mention it or complain" (apart from now?); so not only self obsessed but conceited too! It isn't just depression either. The same people who make jibes about someone having "man flu" when they have said they have a cold are then the worst people to know when they are ill. By the way, that "man flu" joke... so ten years ago, really, even if you use it correctly.
Me: "I have a cold."
Unfunny person: "Aaaah, do you have man-flu?"
Me: "Sorry, I think you have misunderstood. I said I have a cold. If I'd said I had flu but my symptoms were merely cold-like then the joke would work. You're not very bright are you?"
I've had flu twice in my life. It was really horrible. I know the difference. The only real upside to having Ulcerative Colitis is that because I am on immuno-suppressant drugs I get a flu jab every year so I'm not likely to ever have that again. The other thing that is really horrible, by the way: Tonsilitis. I've only had it once but it hurts like hell and I couldn't swallow properly for six months after! Anyone who gets that regularly has my sympathy.
I am currently a third of the way through three weeks off work. I have some minor money worries, as always but nothing like those of four years ago. Much as I don't love my job, being away from it for a while seems to be helping me realise it isn't as dreadful as I sometimes have myself believe. And now the bad news!
Trawling through the charity shops of Emsworth a couple of days back I bought myself a couple of Blu-rays (Goodfellas and Scarface) and Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled", a book about the writing of poetry. I used to write poetry and then I stopped, thinking it was a bit pretentious and I wasn't very good at it. Well, so what? I don't care if it makes me a mewing pansy and I start wearing a floppy hat and scarves indoors, I used to do it because I enjoyed it and it was cathartic! So watch this space... bloody awful poetry coming soon!
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