Eating That Elephant

I’ve had this happen before. Dreams. Too many vibrant dreams. They come crowding in at 2 am, like annoying chattering children that are trying to make sense of long drawn out stories but never quite get it right. By dawn I’m waking up every half hour, trying to brush them away and regain my hold on reality, only to have new ones attack me just as I’m falling back asleep. The line between reality and dream gets blurrier and blurrier as my attempts to make the dreams go away become part of the dreams themselves.

I finally give up and pull myself out of bed, looking for the peace of a quiet mind, and my head is filled with alternate realities that don’t make sense. I almost never remember my dreams…all of my life most of my dreams have been wispy, fragmented, shadowed versions of stories that last only seconds. The occasional vivid dream would stay with me like a strange book I had read, but it was rare. But now, these pesky ones cloud my memory with truths that never happened.

Now I’m exhausted. I don’t want to live two lives at once, especially when one never makes sense. I’m taking GABA and a combo with melatonin, valerian, and theanine; it makes no difference whether I take them or not. I’ve tried not having caffeine after my regular morning coffee, and I’ve tried not having any alcohol; neither made a difference. In the past I’ve had luck with tryptophan but it hasn’t seemed to do much this time, probably because I used to have trouble when going to sleep, and now it’s later in the night. Maybe I’ll try a ton of melatonin, working up slowly. I’d rather not take a sleeping pill; I’m so sensitive to things like that. Ideas are welcome, though.