Perchance to dream.

I've started taking these drowsy antihistamines before bed most nights because of reasons. I say most nights because I'm not supposed to mix them with alcohol and I've done a fair bit of drinking in the last couple of weeks, so I don't always get the chance to. I wake up much sleepier than I usually am in the mornings, and I feel myself getting physically tired before bed whenever I take them. Properly tired, my eyelids struggle and everything feels like I've been up for forty-eight hours. Proper drowsy meds, so that's kind of nice.

And so every time I take them I get nightmares.

I've taken them sporadically, so I'm almost certain it's them. Owing to the infrequency of me even recognizing dreams at all and the fact that the nights I take them coincide with the nights I have really vivid nightmares, it's pretty easy to conclude that there's at least the slightest of correlations.

Until the first evening I hadn't had a nightmare in years, they just didn't come. I realise that I dream and that I rarely remember them as easily as others seem to be able to, but I maintain that nightmares stay with me, because, you know, they kind of suck. So, that was a little jarring, when the thing that woke me up was a pair of hands around my neck. That was the first one, an extremely vivid nightmare of a physical assault. I know it was physical assault, it had the same urgency attached to it, the same desperation that comes with an almost completely random outburst of violence on your person. I am familiar with the feelings that comes with being assaulted, just to clarify. It is something I've experienced.

The second one reinforced the correlation, because there was a nightmare and it was a recurring one from my childhood. Wait, let me clarify. The fact that I recognized it as a nightmare reinforced the correlation because I never remember normal dreams, and the fact that I recognized it as coming from childhood reinforced that I am able to recognize my nightmares much more frequently than my normal dreams. Does that make sense? It does to me. Malkyf, or whatever.

I don't know how to describe the second one, but it's definitely a nightmare. The third time, the most recent, escapes me but it was still noticeably unpleasant.

So I guess I'm just trying to justify why I believe the two things, the medication and the nightmares, are related. They are. So there.

Alright, Ollie, back to the point.

At first I wanted to stop them immediately. Who wouldn't? I don't want to wake up in a cold sweat one night of my own volition. No one does. I think no one does. No judgement and all that. The slight convenience they give me just wasn't worth the psychological trouble. That feeling lasted all of five seconds before I suddenly wanted to have more nightmares. I wanted to see where they'd end up. I want to reconnect with my unconscious. Maybe I've lost something that kept me anchored and I want to find a way back in. I think it completely normal to say that I am intensely interested in the workings of my own brain. I want to see what I am, and maybe nightmares are the way to do that. Awful things happen, yeah, sometimes completely arbitrarily, and sometimes maybe some relevant shit is going down in the parts of my brain I leave by my pillow.

I'm not afraid of feeling afraid.

Goodnight.

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(In progress)

3/4

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Night one
The test has begun
And the moon's come up from below

The hour is late
And your nerves are a state
So close the door
And shut the window

So sleep
Sleep
Perchance to dream