22 Dream).

My mother, who is sitting down around the corner and just out of view, tells me that she had found a letter I wrote to Jimmy in his bedroom. “You mean MY bedroom,” I said, correcting her angrily, and it wasn’t in the tone of a question. I felt possessive of my room and angry that she’d intruded and read the letter. She leans from around the corner to look at me, sort of smiling but saying nothing, as if I’d given her the reaction she was after. So I go into my old bedroom (at my parents house), and some things are still in there. An old dresser with drawers missing and a lot of old writings that I stuff into my book bag to take with me.

It may or may not have been part of this particular dream, but at some point I’m kissing a girl — or rather, what we’re doing would be kissing if either of us had opened our mouths in the midst of our face-mashing. It was “dry-kissing,” I suppose, which would be the lip equivalent to dry-humping. I used to have dry-humping dreams quite frequently, and over time I came to the conclusion that it signified my fears of intimacy despite my simultaneous desperation for it.

Interestingly, interpretations of the more detailed dream resonated with the apparent meaning of this one.

My mother may represent the Jungian anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche who traditionally guides us through difficult periods. Given the rest of the dream, however, it may have more to do with the fact that my mother and I didn’t really bond in my youth, and in fact fought fairly consistently.

Bedrooms allegedly represent aspects of ourselves that are private and hidden — personal thoughts, emotions, and issues we don’t wish to reveal or discuss. With respect to our childhood bedroom specifically, this suggests that something in our current waking circumstances triggered hidden memories from our childhood.

Understandably, a bedroom intruder is supposed to symbolize a sense of insecurity or fear of trusting people. Given a lot of my insecurity and trust issues likely originated with my relationship with my mother, this may be quite fitting.

While writing in general represents, for me, trapping a moment in amber through self-expression as well as catharsis and psychological alchemy, writing a letter is supposed to represent the desire to establish a connection with someone — Jimmy, my childhood friend, apparently. Yet I didn’t send the letter, but rather left it in my old bedroom, which again, suggests a fear of making such a connection. So again, all signs point to: trust issues and fears of intimacy.

One element of the dream I have yet to understand, however, is why she called my bedroom Jimmy’s bedroom — and why I so angrily corrected her, feeling so possessive of it. My only thought is that she was implying that I was taking on his pain as my own, and so the private, secret, childhood matters my bedroom represented were more his than mine despite the fact that I’d taken them on.

Actually, having written that out, it makes a good deal of sense.

I met Jimmy when I was maybe five years of age. Our mothers worked together at a day care and given we were both the same age and both rather shy, they thought we would hit it off as friends. And we did: in no time I came to consider him the brother I never had.

He had two brothers and a little sister and, at least for awhile, I would often visit him at his house, even sleep over on occasion. The way they lived was quite different than in my own family. All the kids lived in the same room, took showers together. For a time, they had no television, and only had so many toys that they could store in a relatively small chest. Most of all, his parents were insanely religious — and the father was incredibly abusive. I would hide beneath a bed or behind a door, unable to defend my friend and his siblings from their father, who would beat them right in front of me. Most haunting of all was the image of the young sister, a blond and petite girl, face red, wet, and twisted into an expression of absolute terror. It’s haunted me for years.

For years I had buried all memories of Jimmy, and when they emerged in flashbacks back in high school (along with many other, far more bizarre memories), I even questioned if I had made him and those circumstances up.

As it turns out, I had not.

One of the questions that plagued me and, honesty, made me feel guilty and ashamed since remembering it all is why it should effect me so strongly. After all, it didn’t happen to me, so what right do I have being traumatized? It was similar to how I felt regarding how I felt about my relationship with my mother in childhood: I was never physically or sexually abused, so many others have been, so what right did I have to complain about how cold and dismissive my mother was towards me in my youth?

Only when I deduced that I was a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) prone to involuntary empathy did it begin to make sense to me. How I’d described myself as an “emotional sponge” all those years finally had some rational footing.

When I met Angela in my twenties in the fast food joint where we worked, I was quite taken by her, and when I learned of the abuse and mindfuckery inflicted upon her by her parents — really, her fucking family as a whole — I became very emotionally involved. I began having haunting dreams about Jimmy, his family, and most specifically his father around that period and it was all too clear to me what triggered it.

So what triggered this most recent dream?

Well, the evening before the dream was the birthday of my ex-girlfriend, Claire, who I stopped talking to a few years ago. After getting drunk, I started having a text conversation with Angela, who I associate with Claire (which was also revealed in the dreams I had when still working with Angela) as well as Jimmy.

So Claire’s birthday likely triggered me texting Angela, which in turn triggered the dream regarding Jimmy.

In addition, either yesterday or the day before, I considered adding the story of Jimmy to my book on strange, often apparently paranormal experiences. He was associated with at least two strange experiences in my childhood, though we never talked about it and those particular memories, unlike the others regarding him, are nearly impossible to verify as accurate. As it turns out, Angela has also had strange experiences all throughout her life, but like so many, she chooses to ignore them.

In any case, the dream seems to have been exploring why I keep my distance from people and remain afraid of nurturing connections despite my desire to.

A Haunting, Evening Stroll.

10/22/21

It took me forever today to stop watching YouTube videos, get up off my ass, and do some grocery shopping, but I finally got motivated around seven thirty. Rather than drive the truck the short distance, I decided to walk there and enjoy the cool, evening air, which I supposed I needed.

Taking a right out the parking lot of my apartment complex, I walked down the sidewalk, passed by some houses, then the cemetery. As I was approaching the short tunnel beneath the bridge, I looked across the street at a house that had put up some pretty cool Halloween decorations, but I kept getting distracted by an elderly, roundish fellow headed in my direction on the sidewalk, carrying grocery bags. At first I thought maybe he was having an aggressive talk with someone on the phone, but as I came closer, it became apparent this was not the case. He was holding a conversation with someone who wasn’t there — or some disembodied being I couldn’t see, for all I fucking know, but it didn’t seem to me that he was merely talking aloud to himself. As I got within a foot or two of him, he finally seemed to notice me, or so I thought he did, and I greeted him with a warm smile, a nod of the head, and a “how you doing?” He said, “oh!” as he stepped aside, returned my smile, nodded, and said, “thank you.”

‘Twas a little strange, but given the town I work in and the strange people that inhabit it, I am well-adapted to such encounters at this point.

So I proceeded to enter the short, dark tunnel, and as I do so I hear something buzzing, like electricity. I continue to walk my way through it and suddenly, out of nowhere, as I’m about two-thirds the way through, my adrenile surges, my anxiety heightens, and I get the overwhelming, terrifying feeling that someone is right behind me. I actually turn around and look over my shoulder just as I exit the tunnel, but no one is there. Until I cross the street, however, that sense that someone is tailing me still lingers nonetheless.

I get my groceries and then begin the walk back, entering the tunnel yet again just as a train begins to go over the bridge above. All is well until, yet again, I’m about two thirds the way through, when the same thing happens. Adrenaline surges. Anxiety breaks through the ceiling. Someone is behind me, following me, and the sense is remarkably intense. I don’t remember if I bothered looking behind me as I did on the first occasion, but the feeling of being followed remained with me for most of the way home this time.

I know of the hypothesis that electromagnetic fields (EMF) and infrasound may explain many ghost sightings, as being sensitive to such fields can cause, for instance, the sense that one is being watched. Perhaps the electric buzzing I heard on my first walk through the tunnel — and likely also on my way back, though I didn’t notice it over the sound of the train plowing by on the bridge above me — may suggest one or the other was the true culprit here. After all, I am reasonably convinced that I constitute what is known as a Hypersensitive Person (HSP), as I’m hypersensitive in nearly every conceivable respect, so perhaps EMF hypersensitivity is just one more aspect of that.

Fucked if I know.

And maybe the two dreams as of late that I’ve had regarding dead people, the most recent of which was this morning, provided a context that led me to interpret the sensations I had when walking through the tunnel in just the way that I did. Not to mention that its Halloween season.

Even so, I find it curious that on both occasions the sensation came on abruptly and amazingly strong only when I was about two-thirds the way through the tunnel, yet it wasn’t in the same area within the tunnel, but rather at equal distance from opposite ends. I find it hard to believe that the source of the EMF would be moving, particularly in that specific fashion.

And then there was that roundish, elderly fellow arguing with someone that wasn’t there — or someone I couldn’t see — just as he was walking towards me from the direction of the tunnel. Did he experience it, too, perhaps more profoundly than I, and was he seeing and talking to an entity I only felt, however profoundly? Or was he even more sensitive to EMF or infrasound than I was, and so his experience was more multifaceted and intense than my own?

Highs & Lows of an Isolationist Bastard.

I have had an extremely low people tolerance since as far back as I can remember, and I’ve always felt guilty about it. It doesn’t matter who the people in question are, either; if I’m around anyone long enough, I begin to feel drained. Not only that, but I feel a sensation akin to someone who is claustrophobic being pushed impossibly hard into a corner. The pressure is unbearable; the sense of discomfort, relentless. It’s like my soul is being crushed, like I’m suffocating, and if I don’t run away to the freedom of silence and solitude I might lose myself.

I need to reserve space and time when and where there is no need to attend to the needs of others or serve the interests of a person or a place I’m employed at. I need to be left alone in an environment that I control. An environment that is mine.

This is how I recharge my social batteries.

I’ve always been rather nocturnal, too, enjoying the alone time that comes when darkness falls. Before I began engaging in what I call “active insomnia” in my teens, where I would get up and do things until exhaustion hit, I was constantly a practitioner of “passive insomnia.” Though in bed with the lights off, with eyes open or closed, I was awake, thinking or daydreaming as a kid until I tired myself out. In my teens and twenties, I’d have the lights on and I’d read a book, watch a movie, write, engage in artwork, or just stare into space and think, think, think without interruption or distraction. Often I’d listen to some music, look at myself in the mirror, and lip sync, pretending I was the lead singer in a band.

Now? Now I either drink and smoke pot or vegitate before YouTube or Netflix. I used to be so much more productive in my solitude and I enjoyed it so much more. Of course, I was consistently thoroughly caffeinated, too, which probably, at least in part, explains that increased productivity.

In any case, this people-tolerance means that after an average work shift, I’m pretty much done with people. It sucks that I’ll refuse to hang out with friends I truly value or cancel plans I naively made with friends because, when the time comes, it turns out that I’d been around people in general too much and simply couldn’t take it anymore. And I know how impossible it is to get my frkends to understand this about me and to not take it personally. And I know it sounds like a lame excuse, but I honestly feel as though this is simply how I am, how I’m wired, and there’s not much I can do about it.

I’m introverted. I’m hypersensitive as hell. This is simply how I operate.

When I’ve tried to battle against this and hang out with friends anyway, I’ve been irritable, angry, downright ragey — that, or I just shut down, withdraw, inevitably leaving early or pressuring whoever took me there to take me the fuck home. On weekends, I’m always reluctant to go out as well, as I won’t have an opportunity to be alone for such a wonderful stretch of time for another week.

This has irritated friends, ruined friendships, and has certainly played a role in fucking up the rare intimate relations I might have with a girl. Anne understood this about me, anticipated and accepted when I wished to be alone, but I could feel it bothered her, and that made me feel guilty as fuck. It wasn’t her fault, of course; she was just doing her best to make us work. When she tossed around the idea of eventually moving in together, she said she knew we’d have to have a room or place I could have all too myself. Perhaps yet another reason I should have fought to hold onto her.

Any long-term, live-in relationship would require me having a study. That’s right: a study. Fuck the “man cave” bullshit.

I often wonder if I could ever make a true relationship work, being how I am, who I am, particularly given how long its been since I’ve actually tried. I’ve tried to write off the possibility entirely, but dreams and the unprompted meanderings of my waking mind seem persistent that the desire for intimacy with a woman is there, that its something I need, whether I like it or not.

Is it just my nature to constantly wage war with myself, are these extreme contradictions within me as immortal as they are persistent in their nagging, or could these opposing forces within me actually be reconciled?

Need Me Some Body Knobs.

Today, I thought to myself: I wish I had four knobs on my body somewhere, or perhaps a remote control, all for adjusting the volume on seemingly hardwired aspects of this meat sheath, this flesh vessel, this corporeal container that my consciousness is temporarily housed in.

One knob would enable me to turn the volume up and down on my senses. That way I wouldn’t have to hear the machines beeping at work, or the ghastly country music playing on the store radio, or the current Christmas music. Or the jackass that pulls into the space beside me while I’m on break, trying to read a book, with his bass cranked to the max so it sounds like a goddamn T-Rex is tap-dancing right beside me.

So I wouldn’t have to bear the smell when I clean the restrooms. Or stand close to Gus.

So I wouldn’t have to feel the texture of the new rags when I’m cleaning something like the tables in the dining room, or the sound that results when the tag on a new mop head rubs against the tiles, or the bitter fucking cold when I mosey on into the walk-in freezer for something.

I could even turn down my senses to a reality-canceling zero in toto, thereby escaping into my mind completely whenever I desired.

Another knob would enable me to control the volume of my thoughts, though there appear to be multiple layers of thoughts, so maybe I need multiple knobs. At least two: the fully conscious and seemingly deliberate ones and the involuntary and automatic ones, and I’d mostly aim at the second set with respect to conscious adjustments. Specifically, the target would be what are known as Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs), the intrusive “Flashback Bitchslap” memories (unless they constitute ANTs themselves; I am a bit perplexed on that point), and that bad music that plays on repeat.

When alone and prepared, I’d turn up the volume and in so doing hopefully banish their spell, take away their semiconscious and no doubt subliminal influence on not only my conscious thoughts, but my emotions (though it could function the other way around, too — or perhaps both, in a feedback loop. I’m not at all clear on that point, either).

I would write them down like a stenographer of the self so that I’d know all the shit I’m saying to myself, whispering to mysekf, and then practice on defeating them. Not through “thought stopping,” as that infernal technique just results in an emotionally intensified and painfully loud rebound, but rather via techniques that actually seem to work, like objectifying the thoughts and bathing in the realization that you are, after all, not at all synonymous with them — like in mindfulness meditation.

Don’t push them away, don’t grab a hold of them, just witness them dispassionately. Let them arise and pass away.

Until I got the hang of it, I’d spend the rest of my time with the semiconscious and subliminal automatic thoughts cranked down to zero. Life is bad enough without exacerbating the issue by compulsively, obsessively kicking myself in the ass from the inside and sucker-punching myself within the confines of my own sacred psyche.

Still another knob would enable me to control the volume of my emotions — and, if I’m not bat-shit insane, the emotions I absorb like a fucking sponge when around other people and sometimes mistake for my own.

Much as I just said about the thought-knob, two knobs might be a better fit here, too. Not because that some emotions are liminal and others semiconscious or subliminal, however, but because some emotions are my own and other emotions seem to come from other people, and I’m sick of feeling them and reacting to them as if they were my own. Empathy is by no means horrible, its just that my empathy is lacking discipline, healthy boundaries, and doesn’t often if ever submit itself to voluntary control. I’d work on this shit like the ANTs — put aside some window of time to practice managing them and effectively mute them when they become overwhelming in the day-two-day and night-to-night.

Last but not least, I’d like a knob for instinctual drives — at least the drive to have sex, as that desire can be quite distracting, particularly when you’ve gone a considerable length of time without scratching that itch.

The consequences are ridiculous. Truly. Everything is sexualized. You feel like you’ve come to share the humor of Beavis and Butthead, as sex becomes your default context for everything. You hear someone say something superficially innocent and giggle like an idiot because in your deprived mind it sounds sexual, like a “that’s what she said” joke, and next to orgasm, laughter spawned from comments twisted into naughty things is the best transient fix available.

While I don’t mind that too much, and for all I know I might have a perverted sense of humor even if I regularly got my rocks off with a preferable member of the opposite sex, the intensity of the drive is agonizing, the need to take matters into my own hands bare minimum once or twice a day lest I be incredibly tense and likely an asshole is frustrating, irritating and, when intixucated, often time-consuming — and needlessly so: why hold off until I can find that “perfect” porn to unload to when it could be done and over with in record time if I wished?

No, having the capacity to turn it off when it’s not seving me or when I can’t manage to serve and/or get served would be wonderful.

Its not too much to ask, either. I mean, why has evolution not granted us this blessed reprieve? After all, there’s even a point where, after you’ve starved for some time, you no longer desire food. Its like your body realizes that you’re at the end, that you cannot acquire the required sustenence, and seeing as the body is probably going to die, it has some mercy on the inhabiting consciousness. But when it comes to fucking, for some reason, the body evidently feels the need to conjure up its capacity for ruthless persistence.

It holds the species above itself, sky-high above the individual organism. It holds the herd above the individual. The troop over the singular, sexually frustrated, domesticated ape caught in the grips of circumstantial abstinence — the circumstance involving fear, lack of confidence, and so on.

Fuck that. I’m starving.

So give me a knob I can turn to take away the pointless agony.