The Strain of Sleep

Dear heavenly father, I have terrible terrible dreams. I wish they were those bizarre dreams where I'm being castrated with a rusty railroad spike or falling into a pit of something horrible. No, what makes my dreams so terrible is how real they are. A dream where I'm looking into a mirror and I don't know what I'm looking for. A dream where my wife won't forgive and I keep apologizing for something even though I don't know what it is. A dream where I'm waking up from another bad dream only a year has passed by since I've been asleep. You know what has changed? Nothing. There aren't any messages on my machine. There isn't any mail piled up on my door step. No one has been trying to reach me and my life is the same by simply not living it.

Its different to wake up and realize you missed out on something. Sure, you're bummed for a few moments. When you were sleeping, your room mate went to a wild party with the biggest chocolate cake he's ever seen and the girls rubbed it onto there bare breasts to emphasize how much of a dessert it truly was. Yes, it sucks to have missed it but knowing moments like that exist and that had you just been awake a bit later that night, you could've have been apart of it makes you stay awake so you can catch the next one.

But to wake up and realize you've missed nothing, you might as well go back to bed. At least in a terrible dream, you've got something to live for. Yeah, I'm dreaming that my wife is leaving me for Salvador Dali but at least I have something that means a damn. While all I have is the pain of the dream, I can fill in the blanks. Its a bad dream because I love her. Its a bad dream because we use to dance naked in front of the mirror together. She would take me out in the middle of a busy intersection and kiss me there to make sure I'd remember it. This bad dream is a result of good memories we have. I might not know who she is but I'll be damned if I don't love her. She's my wife after all.

So, heavenly father, I'll take any dream whether I'm a bottom feeder or at the top of the food chain. I just don't want to wake up and realized I've missed nothing.