Cosmos as my witness, I wonder what the hell is up with my dream life sometimes.

Been having another day where I sleep and dream a lot, and this time, it is not the nice kind of sleepy day where I feel nothing but relief at the end of the sleep fast and a pleasant relaxation and surrender.

No, this is the bad kind of sleepy day, where dreams completely kick my ass and I wake up feeling like I just ran a marathon through the desert with full plate armor on.

So here I am once again, freshly awoken from difficult sleep, covered in my own sweat like I have been marinating in it, and wanting nothing more than to just go the hell right back to sleep.

And there is something very discouraging about waking up from really deep and intense sleep, with dreams so intense that you feel lucky to have escaped them alive, and realizing that you do not have much choice about going right back to sleep soon and submitting yourself to more of the same.

So I guess that when I am done writing this, I will be laying back down to get my head kicked around like a soccer ball by my dreams some more. Yay.

One dream I had today deserves special mention.

I dreamed that it was my birthday and I was eagerly anticipating the party et al. It was sort of taking place in the house I grew up on, or at least, the bizarrely constructed version of it in my dreams.

So I was watching the preparations for my birthday party going on, and while doing that, I drifted off to sleep. (Sleeping in my dreams again. I am so lazy. )

When I woke up, I headed into the kitchen (the kitchen was our dining room as well when I was a kid) and found that I had slept through the entire party. I had missed my birthday party entirely. The food was all eaten, most of the guests were gone, the decorations had all been put away. It was all over.

Needless to say, I was incredibly angry. They had my birthday party without me? Nobody thought to come wake me up and tell me the party was starting? Nobody noticed that the birthday boy was missing? They all just had fun without me? Angry is not nearly a strong enough word. I was apoplectic.

And to make it worse, the people who were left were quite indifferent about the whole thing. They just shrugged their shoulders philosophically and said “Well, you weren’t here. ” They seemed to think that if they all had a good time, I had nothing to complain about.

So yeah, I was a might peeved. I stomped around complaining bitterly (and loudly), trying to assemble some kind of meal from the few scraps of food left behind by the hungry hordes.

The dream changed tenor, though, after I complained that people had not even left gifts, and it was revealed that actually, they had, and the people remaining had just been hiding them from me so they could surprise me with them.

That partially placated me, at least. Who does not love getting gifts?

I do not remember exactly what I got. I know that one of them was this bizarre gift card cum birthday card which was for $39.52 (why that number?), and somehow involved me having to peel off a sticker with a picture of lightning on it and stick it some other place on the card, like I was doing one of those crazy Publisher’s Clearing House contests with all the things to peel and stick various places.

Someone commented that this was a pretty unusual gift, and I said “Well, the person who sent it to me is.. unique. ” And I said it in a sort of blushing, pleased way, like it was from a secret admirer.

No idea who it was though. My dreams are disturbingly lacking in specific people. Just generic placeholders, without names or even individual personalities.

Well, I have always been more transpersonal than was good for me.

Oh, I also dreamed that I was working on a video game that was going to be some kind of virtual board game, and the computer I was doing this on was tucked away in a room off the offices of a municipal pool of some sort.

And there was definitely an enjoyably clandestine aspect to the whole thing. I was using this computer stealthily, like I was not supposed to be there, and from time to time I had to get up and move around so I would not get caught.

Though I had the feeling that I was doing this for some larger power. So I guess I was black ops?

And there was some confusing stuff about my using some enormous synthesizer that was laid out like one of those big electric organs with three keyboards plus foot pedals.

It had both a 3.5 inch floppy and a 5.25 inch floppy built in, and there was this stack of little cards that supposedly had the sheet music for various songs on it even though they were way too small.

So to sum up, in the dream world, I have been pretty busy, at least.

That dream about the birthday really sticks with me, though, because that totally seems like something that could happen to me in the real world.

It is exaggerated, of course, but the essence of it resonates with how I feel about myself, and how I feel about how others see me.

I have deep, deep feelings of unimportance and worthlessness, and a deep part of me is always paranoid that people do not really value my presence in their lives and honestly find life a lot easier and more fun when I am not around.

So that dream struck deep at some of my innermost fears.

That accomplishes something, I hope.

Hooray for catharsis, I guess.

Had a bad moment tonight. I was eating supper and watching a show about alternate energy sources on Discovery Science (awesome channel!) when I suddenly got this feeling like a giant invisible foot was pushing me down.

It was basically an amplification of that weak feeling that I have been getting lately. It was pretty frightening, to be honest. In additional to the squished feeling, I felt nauseous, my head was pounding painfully, and I felt a terrible heavy dread.

Luckily, it passed quite quickly, and I feel more or less normal now. But this is a worrysome development and I really hope it does not recur.

This incident only makes me all the more determined to hash this out with my therapist on Thursday. This shit did not happen before I went on Wellbutrin. I might be having a bad reaction to it.

Certainly, this sort of thing makes me worried that the additional strain on my no doubt extremely weak and deteriorated cardiovascular system, which already has to deal with my obesity, caused my introducing Wellbutrin to all my other meds is simply more than this unhealthy carcass can take.

It would be ironic indeed if the medication that is supposed to give me a new lease on life instead ends up making me even sicker.

But spring has also sprung, and it is getting hotter by the day (joy), and the air is filled with allergens, and so Wellbutrin is not the only factor in play.

Mood-wise, it is not been a great day either. I spent a lot of today feeling depressed and angry and feeling like just staying in bed because another day of my crappy stupid pointless and most of all unsatisfying life was just more than I could take.

Of course, I did get up eventually and drag myself through my usual sort of day. Spent hours this afternoon trying to catch up on my Facebook feed. I really ought to cut down on the amount of stuff that posts to my feed. But there is just so much interesting stuff out there!

In a sense, I was better when I could not have the most interesting stuff on the Internet delivered to my virtual doorstep every day. When I had to go find it, my inherent laziness kept me from getting run ragged by my various interests.

But with Facebook, it’s so easy that it actually becomes a problem. First world problem, I know.

And I am doing a lot of sighing lately. And dreaming.

Would you believe that twice today, I dreamed about cake? I had two dreams where I had access to a very large quantity of cake. And I was stuffing myself, like any fat boy.

And in the second dream, I actually said to someone “If I eat one more piece of cake today, I will turn into a cake. ” So I actually remembered the cake orgy from the first dream while having the second dream.

And the second dream had a whole crosswalk in my home town replaced with a vast cake that was supposed to be a memorial to someone (??), and that is getting into some surreal shit right there.

Reminded me of this infamous music video :

I think the video is brilliant but a lot of people, including Tom Petty himself, thought it was way too creepy. First time with a new video director. Last time too, I would guess.

Anyhow, the part I am referring to is at the end of the video, right here. Warning, nightmare fuel.

That video is widely credited with inspiring this famous sequence from Star Trek : The Next Generation, although it could be just a coincidence.

Anyhow, in the dream, shortly after saying the bit about turning into a cake (eep), part of my normal consciousness must have seeped into the dream because I said “I am going to have to take so much insulin after this!”

Honestly, after eating like twelve pieces of sheet cake, I would probably be dead. Or at least in the hospital. My blood would turn into maple syrup.

So there you have it, fat guy dreams of cake. It’s humiliating to think about. Of all the magnificent possibilities for spiritual growth inducing travails, soul cleansing nightmares, mind stretching surrealist hallucinations, or just plain old down and dirty fun, what does my mind come up with?

Dessert. How very sad.

I guess the lack of sweetness in my life has left a vast spiritual void within me that my dreaming mind is desperately trying to fill. I never thought, before my diagnosis with diabetes, that I was someone with a really strong desire for sugary treats.

But I guess you do not know how important something is to you until you have to go without. And given how often I dream of eating all the things I should not, it was really important.

And, to cut myself a little slack here, it could be that the sugary stuff in my dream is just a stand-in for all the other things, all the other pleasures that I want out of life but cannot have.

The unfulfilled desire for sweet things is simply the simplest route to connect my desires with their fulfillment. In the grand scheme of things, the desire for a chocolate bar would be the easiest for me to fulfill. It requires nothing but a store and the price.

That doesn’t make it a good idea, mind you. But I can see how it is the shortest bridge for my sleeping mind to cross.

After all, all human beings crave sweet things. Even tiny babies barely dry from birth show a preference for sweet over all things.

Still, I really wish my brain would come up with something else for me to dream about. Something a little less stereotypical of a fat guy.

Hey brain! What the hell is wrong with some good old-fashioned sex?

That’s nice and primal, right?

And vastly more entertaining.