To Have Sex, Perchance To Sleep

"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
~William Dement

The dreams are back. Or should I say Hypnagogic hallucinations. (I looked it up, and I have had both the visual and auditory kind though not a narc, nor on drugs nor suffering from mood swings. Ok so it may just be a self-diagnosis, but I have all the symptoms! So at any rate, can it really all just be due to my anxiety about sex? Pathetic!) I must be stressed, which is nothing new, so why suddenly the dreams again? Enough. I'm tired of feeling like I'm being watched or having my mind read. The other night I dreamed my bed was transparent and people could see me in my underwear. It's ridiculous because number one, what? What the hell kind of dream is that? Number two, who cares if I'm seen in my underwear? Everyone wears it! Number three, the odd thing is I didn't experience a feeling of shame or embarrassment at having my body revealed (like it was when I was a kid), it's more a feeling of having people know something about me I don't want them to know. The fact that my subconscious is using the image of my naked body as a metaphor for my naked mind/heart...or my fear of revealing myself to someone is so pedantic I can't even stand it. I'm vulnerable in body and mind. I get it. As if my nudity could reveal something...like my virginity maybe? Could I be any more unimaginative?

I spoke a little about it with a friend of mine and she claimed it was exactly that: my fear of intimacy. I don't want to be vulnerable and it's taking the form of being watched (and lately being naked). She said, and I quote, "You don't want to let anyone in and you know it. It's what you do." I really, really hate that she's right. She's one of the few that has gotten in and even experienced the worst of it, and yet she's still around telling me my truths. I tried to claim it was just stress and the evolvement of these sleep hallucinations but she wasn't buying it.

Last night I dreamed I was topless at a beach resort. No one else was and I was trying to cover myself by crossing my arms, but like before not because I was embarrassed. In fact I was quite comfortable and kept forgetting and lowering my arms. I was more concerned with how people would judge me because I was topless. Like they would think I was trashy and just wanted attention or something. Of course people from work showed up and that's when I really started to stress. I couldn't find my hotel room and I ended up running all over the place, trying to follow this tiny map that was embedded on the back of the key. All the while trying to avoid being seen because I was topless. So weird.

As much as I have tried to deny it, the one theme through all of these waking paranoid dreams is that anxiety about people (mainly work people for some reason) knowing things about me I don't want them to. It's never directly linked to my virginity, but I guess I have to admit that it must be playing a part. There really isn't much that I'm hiding per se either, aside from my personal sex life, which really is no one's business anyway so what the hell? I don't know about their sex lives, why should they know about mine? Why would they be interested anyway? I can't figure it out, and I would like this obvious insecurity to stop manifesting itself in these ridiculous hallucinations. A full night sleep would be so heavenly...For godsake there's a war happening, people are starving to death, the climate is changing, whole species of animals are dying out...the world is basically slowly imploding. Seriously, why is my freaking v-card the cause of all my anxiety! Enough!