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.