A Milroy Moment

Something's been up with my sleep schedule lately. I've been having very strange and often very scary dreams that have caused me to wake up every hour, on the hour... which is weird enough in itself... but I've also been having a recurring dream that I haven't had since college (but which I used to have on a nightly basis when I was younger) that causes me to wake up at 3 a.m. Naturally, my first thought when I look at the clock during one of these episodes is of the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose, in which they talk of 3 a.m. being the devil's hour. Insanely scary movie, by the way.

This, coupled with the howling wind (made worse by my apartment's poor insulation and useless double-paned, POS windows) that this sudden temperature plunge has brought with it, and added to the fact that I've always been nearly convinced my apartment is haunted... needless to say, it's been a freaky couple of weeks.

So I thought I would take this chance and share some of my stories with you guys, in the spirit of Halloween and all. Plus, I'm totally trying to make my own collection of October Moments a'la Magazine Man over at Somewhere on the Masthead. (Not that I'll ever be such a fantastic story teller... but, you know. High hopes.) I think I'll call mine Milroy Moments, in honor of the beautiful street I live on... even though, technically, I live on the crappy side of it.

--
HE'S MAKING EGGS!
(A recollection of a dream I had a few nights ago. This is more funny than it is anything else... but I still woke up in a cold sweat.)

I was sleeping in my bed, but I was right at that point of the waking stage where you’re aware of what’s going on around you, but not aware enough to do anything about it. In my dream, I woke up slowly. I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach – a nervous feeling. I looked around at my bedroom. It had been torn apart; things were strewn across the room. I didn’t panic, though, until I saw that the closet door nearest me (I have two) had been open. Something was in front of it, right in the crook of the door where the hinges are... all I could see was a silhouette of something, not quite shaped like a human, but something about it gave me the feeling that it wasn't simply an inanimate object. I’m not sure what it was, but it made me realize that the door couldn’t have just blown open if something had been placed before it.

(Note: The closets in my bedroom have always scared the bejeesus out of me - but that's a different story - so the fact that one was open in my dream nearly made me wet myself.)

I sat up slowly, terrified. I very slowly left the bedroom and entered the rest of the apartment, which looked exactly the same. Laundry baskets full of my clothes had been rooted through and carelessly tossed to the side. Kitchen cabinets were open and things were strewn across the counters and onto the stove and floor. Even my furniture had been moved. My first thought was that I had been robbed. I looked for a sweater in one of the laundry baskets on the living room floor, and I moved a chair out of the way from the front door. I pounded on my neighbor's door several times until he answered – I had awoken him. He chuckled and said, “Here’s my wake up call lady.” I apologized and asked if he would come to my place with me – I put my head in my hands and my voice broke when I told him I was really scared. He came over and was appalled at the sight.

The next thing I knew, the two of us were in my bedroom, and there were two other people there, although I’m not sure who they were. I was laying in bed on my side, looking at the three others who were sitting on the floor and in chairs at the bedside. I don’t know what we were talking about, but the atmosphere seemed somewhat relaxed. Then we all heard a noise from the kitchen – it sounded like my stove burners were being turned on, like the clicking noise the burners make when you're waiting for the flame to ignite.

(Except that I have an electric stove in my apartment, so it makes no noise at all.)

We all looked at each other and walked out of the bedroom together, crowded in the small hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen. Frightened, someone cried, “He’s making eggs!” And I realized that there was a frying pan indeed cooking something on the stove of its own accord - no one was standing before it. The pan was in the air and the food inside turning itself over, as if someone had flipped the eggs just by jostling the pan in the air. I was horrified and didn’t move from the clan of people gathered just outside my bedroom door. Suddenly, I realized it wasn’t eggs being cooked but ground beef of some sort – the pan had tipped forward and emptied its contents into a big red dish made of plastic on the floor. It reminded me of a dog dish.

I woke up terrified and hoarse from trying to scream. I don’t think I completely awoke, though, because there was really no break between that dream and the next one.

Which will have to wait for another day.
--

So there you have it, folks. I've been trying to force myself out of bed after a dream wakes me up so that I can write down its contents for research the following day. (So I believe that dreams carry a degree of meaning along with them. Sue me.) I was in luck this night because I had been working on my laptop before I fell asleep; it was lying next to me on the bed. My hands shaking, I typed the entire thing out (and laughed for like five minutes when I reread the "He's making eggs!" part") then turned on a Fresh Prince rerun to calm me down before trying to fall asleep again.

Major elements for research: closet, laundry, furniture, kitchen, stove, eggs, beef, dish.

"It's not ah too-mah"

Today I was convinced I had a tumor. A brain tumor, to be exact.

For the past week and a half or so, I have been having terrible nightmares. I've been waking up at all hours of the night in a cold sweat with tears on my pillows and still streaming out of my eyes. A couple of times, I woke myself up screaming. This has been happening every night for the past week and a half.

I haven't had a nightmare for two and a half years. I remember the very last time exactly because I talked to someone about it and, after that, I stopped having it. When I was a kid, I used to have the same nightmare every night. EVERY night. They tapered off when I got in high school and ceased completely when I started college, except for that one time my sophomore year. A girl who lived down the hall from me in the dorms was into that kinda stuff, so I told her about it. We talked about it, made some sense of it, and I haven't had it since.

It's not the same nightmare I'm having now. That one was childish. I was really scared the last time I had it, but moreso, I think, because I was remembering how much it used to scare me when I was little. But this new bout of them... they're terrible. It's a new kind of fear... not the same feeling that the old nightmares gave me when I woke up. A walk to the kitchen for a glass of water and a quick readjustment of the sheets and blankets used to solve that pretty well. With these new ones, I can't even fall back asleep after some of them. Last night, I had to turn on my light and drift off to a very loud and very bad late-night TV show. These are serious. They scare me so much I don't even want to type about them.

You're probably wondering why nightmares would make someone think that she had a brain tumor. Well... read the book "The Dark Half" by Stephen King. Immediately I remembered this book and how it freaked me out... then I laughed it off and remembered that Stephen King gets paid to scare gullible readers. But... it was loosely based on a true story, which I promptly remembered right after I had convinced myself otherwise.

In addition to the nightmares, I've been having horrible headaches. Headaches so bad that no matter what I take or how much, they won't go away. The only thing that works tempermentality is Excedrin Migraine (for years I've sworn by Aleve... stupid Naproxen warning!!). I've had migraines in the past, and these daily headaches are just as painful, minus the puking that usually follows a real migraine.

I went crying to my mom about it, and I guess she "convinced" me that nothing's wrong with me... "Maybe it's just stress," she said. I could understand that if I was at school. But for three weeks I've been doing nothing but lounging around, drinking beer with Lindsay, and working at the hospital. Not stressful material.

I'm just going to hope that once classes start up again, the weird symptoms will stop. I go back to school tomorrow, no classes until Tuesday... until then, I'm going to reshelve all my books, placing all the Stephen King thrillers on the bottom (behind a couple of teddy bears, maybe) and re-orgainze all my DVDs, hiding any horror flicks in a box in my closet. Can't be too careful.

"Secrets collecting dust but never forget -- skeletons come to life in my closet"

I am afraid of the dark.

There. I said it. Before I typed those words just now, I think there were maybe three or four people in the world who knew that about me. I've always been really embarrassed of it and never told anyone.

It just became very important for me to let all of you in on the secret, though. Tonight a friend and I were playing the dreaded Question Game and he asked me if I could change two things about myself, what would they be. One of my answers was that I would like to be less shy in allowing people to get to know me and more open with myself and others.

I am afraid of the dark.

My first step toward acheiving my goal.

I want to explain, though. I think I'm a pretty brave person most of the time. Things that scare a lot of people don't normally scare me (movies, ghost stories, haunted stuff, the Grotto at night). Although... I might as well just put it out there, since I'm sure that Phil would have wasted no time in posting otherwise in a comment... there was this one time that I watched The Exorcist and no one else was in the apartment... I got really scared and paranoid being all alone and I had to turn off the movie. I have seen it a hundred times and it's never really scared me, except for that one night. Also... the time that Susan knew I was watching The Ring and called me from The Hub and whispered "Seven days" and then hung up was really, really scary. I think I screamed a little into the phone :)

But, anyway... aside from all the teasing and shit I'm sure I'll receive from everyone, it feels good to get it out. Now I don't have to be ashamed of setting my screen saver to click on after sixty minutes, just so I'm sure to be asleep before the room goes dark... or putting the TV on mute and setting the timer, just so there are no unidentified shadows... or feeling my hand across the wall of a darkened room to flip on the light switch before I set foot inside.

It really is rather pathetic. But ah well. So are all of your FACES!

'Night! ;)