Nightmares
I was useless today at work. Just absolutely useless; I don't think I got a wink of sleep last night.

The first nightmare was something I can't really describe. Something about the end of the world, and how causing it was such an easy thing to do, and how just understanding the mechanics of it made it seem tempting. It was out-and-out weird, and though I can't remember why, the very fact that I was waking up at two in the morning seemed to reinforce it somehow. Weird.

Then, when I finally stopped having that dream, I drop into this super-weird one where I'm on a date with myself. And the weird thing is, I'm really trying to impress the male me. It's like it's the most important blind date of my life. And even though I'm not really thinking of it within the dream, the guy I'm going out with isn't the person who stole my body. It's me, like me from a parallel universe where all this never happened, or if my mind was put back in there with the memories of being a girl erased, or some fantasy recreation of what I was like as a guy. At first it was awkward, but we wound up having this conversation of how blind dates made us nervous, but for different reasons.

And, the thing that got me was, "he" kept acting like he was superior to me somehow. Or, not superior... I wish I remembered my dreams better... Like he couldn't understand me. Like there were a bunch of little things that made us incompatible.

For instance, he was really into the meal. I never realized just how much I used to think about eating. I was a fat kid, and even after I got past that, I tended to really give a lot of attention to what I ate, and when I did have a good, big meal, I savored it. It was not quite an event, but something I really enjoyed. The other me was going on about it, and I understood the words and stuff all right, but I just didn't find it as big a deal as he did. In kind of the same way, he wasn't as detail-oriented on some things as I was. I wanted to buy tickets for the next showing of a movie because it just meant waiting twenty minutes more for a much better theater. That sort of thing.

It's not that I didn't like the old me, I did. And it wasn't a chilly date or anything, much the contrary - it was like hanging out with an old friend. Aha, that's what it was like - like remembering someone of the opposite sex from high school or college or something, and remembering how cool they were, and wondering why you never went out. And you just don't have that kind of chemistry. But it was, of course, more than that - I woke up wondering if I just wasn't that guy any more, and couldn't get back to sleep after that. I mean, who could?

-M
- posted 8:00 PM - - (archive use only)