Avoiding Sleep: Dreams Of Childhood

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It's always difficult to write about what you don't understand yourself. Yesterday I wrote about addiction- that I understand. If I shot heroin and nodded out, I didn't dream. If I shot meth, I stayed awake and didn't dream. If I got drunk, I passed out and didn't dream. It's only recently after reading posts by @markwhittam that my eyes became opened and I began to look at things in terms of cause and effect. The Vietnam dreams are fairly obvious- they have Vietnamese soldiers after me... these "other" dreams are more subtle- more troubling.

I've written a couple of posts about Vietnam dreams where I get overrun and killed- so there's no point in belaboring them here. The other dreams- the dreams of childhood are the focus here- reliving these nightmares that I get to do almost every night. Whether it's Vietnam or childhood, the result is the same... I wake up soaked with sweat. The hard part to explain isn't the dreams themselves- but what happens immediately after, as you will see. Remember, I don't understand this, but I'll explain as best as I can... I apologize if this seems disorganized.

Now that I don't have to keep any kind of regular schedule- I try to go to bed when it's still light out- when it's safe. For many years I replaced sleep with drug and alcohol induced stupors... passing out in an attempt to make the dreams and ghosts leave me alone. But that's no longer an option. Before I try to explain what happens I guess I need to explain the dreams themselves- they're weird enough.

Charlie Chan says something in a movie that resonates with me: "Dreams like good liars, distort truth." The dreams of Vietnam, like I wrote before, never take place in Vietnam, but here- the Vietnamese seemed to have followed me. Similarly, the dreams driven by my childhood abuse don't take place in my childhood but have followed me down through the years to adulthood. Unlike the Nam dream which is always the exact same dream- these vary, but with the same result... I'm grabbed by several men who try to rape me- like in my childhood. I manage to fight my way away from them and run and hide. The odd thing is I always run on all fours. When I hide, it's always in some small cramped space into which I can barely fit. It's more or less the same dream with different people and locations. They inevitably find me and I wake up soaked in sweat and twisted up in some impossible knot... and now for the really strange part. My mother died when I was 5 and I assume I went into foster care- there was nobody else. I was with these people "Aunt Pearl" and "Uncle Eddie." I remember "Uncle Eddie's" collection of girlie magazines and him saying in a weird accent: "Hey ittle Buddy." The men in the dreams say that when they're looking for me- I can hear that voice calling. That's the only consistent link. I don't think the Uncle Eddie" guy abused me, that happened after they gave or sold me to Willie.

Like I said I go to bed at 5 or 6 PM every night and every night the same thing happens... I sleep for about 45 minutes or an hour and wake up with this overwhelming feeling of dread. It's hard to explain- a feeling of impending doom. When I go back to sleep the dreams come... the really strange part comes at around 2:30 or 3 AM when I wake up (to avoid sleep). There's a time in between.

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There's a zone or a state of consciousness in between being asleep and awake... a period of time where I can't separate dream from reality- that's the scary part. It's like being awake but the dream is still going on. That's the best I can explain it. It's like the actual memories of what really happened prolong those periods of wakeful-sleepness... Like it's happening again but in adulthood- who knows, maybe I'm just crazy!

The worst part isn't what happened to me... I'm old and I've lived through it. But the people in the system, social workers, family courts, police to some extent, all have to know how much damage to children they do... I'm just one old guy whose pretty fucked up. Multiply me by all the other children stolen from their parents and subjected to even worse abuse than me. That probably didn't make any sense (except to me)... That's why I will continue to fight against a corrupt system full some of the worst people imaginable.

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