Fell asleep at four yesterday afternoon lying cross-ways on the bed with shoes still on; didn't even have time to shut the book ("The Sign of the Four"), which is even more surprising than the shoes. Rose briefly around six to feed and tend to the dog and the cat, then fell back asleep until eight this morning (unshod this time), still not having managed to shut the book before doing so. Luckily I slept like a corpse, and the book remained undisturbed.

So. Got up at eight, fed and let out the dog again, collected the mail, had some toast (need tea; make a mental note), and back to bed again from nine to just now, which is noon, although I'm not entirely sure I'm done yet. But as Ripley says, I've slept enough. Once more unto the breach. (I think it's time I read Henry V; it is a sin to quote things one has not read, a bad sin.)

None of this was with the aid of sleeping pills, as I left my bag downstairs so as not to be bothered by the cellular importunities of my various acquaintances (all of whom I am inclined to hate furiously when their communications wake me), meaning that my tubes of pills (need elegant pillboxes; make a mental note) remained downstairs also. Which in turn means that, as I slept, I dreamt.

I have stopped dreaming, in general, stopped in the way people mean when they say "I have stopped the delivery of the newspaper" because I simply have no patience left for my own ridiculous anxieties, which come out in dreams, nor sufficient mental stability for wishes, which also come out in dreams, usually in the form of having them fulfilled. I think I would be so angry if I were to dream something lovely, like falling in love or having an adventure or being pleased with myself, so frustrated, that I would not be able to function for the remainder of the day following the dream (see previous post for an example of what that's like), and the suffering involved in that is just not acceptable.

Weird to say "fortunately," but fortunately, this time was all anxiety dreams.

I dreamt I was going to school, i.e., U---, and that I had missed an entire day's worth of classes last Monday because I wasn't up to them emotionally and now faced returning to class on a day an assignment I knew existed but didn't know the nature of and so couldn't complete was due. Two weeks into the semester and already failing.

I dreamt my grandmother was over at our house being obnoxious, that I had accidentally left porn and other evidence of my masturbation habits out in a public area where my parents might see them, that I had tied myself up in patent leather bindings and now found no way to to get loose from them (this metaphorical; I've only ever handcuffed myself before, and those I escape from while asleep), that Creature called and I was in the midst of having phone sex with him when my father interrupted by knocking on my bedroom door to insinuate some passive aggression about how I had not sufficiently cleaned some part of the house or other, that I forgot I had put Creature on hold while dealing with cleaning the parts of the house in question, and that my beloved dog Luke (long deceased, in waking life: he died when I was 19 or 20) had returned to us in the form of a turtle.

Other than the bit about Luke, then, everything happened essentially as it does in waking life, although I believe in the dream I owned a miniskirt, which is preposterous.

In waking life, I did the other evening what I had previously instructed myself in strong terms not to do, videlicet, had an orgasm on the phone with Creature. (He has had a few now on the phone with me, which I think is already going too far.) The absolute truth of the matter is that I am hovering somewhere between putting off telling him that I am uninterested in a future with him and actively stringing him along. The reason for the former is that he is having a tough time of it lately in circumstances other than his love life, and I don't want to remove the sole source of happiness from an already dangerously depressed person's life; the reason for the latter is that, lack of interest in a future or romance with him notwithstanding, I find his voice and some of the things he says rather sexy.

This is, incidentally, precisely what the Ride did to me a few years ago, and what I deeply, deeply resented because people who love or respect each other do not do things like this. It is yet another instance of that remarkable phenomenon that has been in the habit of befalling me for the last several years in which I find myself doing to others exactly what I have earlier in life despised and blamed others for doing to me. From a cosmic perspective it's probably hilarious.

From a moral one it is certainly well-deserved, but the real point of this is that it is high time I do something about this nonsense and go back to just hurting myself rather than others as well.

For someone must be hurt in this business (life, I mean: living); that is the law.

Faugh. I have so enjoyed not hurting recently.

And it is high time I started in on my schoolwork. I have a great deal of work to do before I can qualify to live on my own and move out of this wretched country.

I have a great deal of work to do on myself, as well, but no anxiety dreams about it. Possibly because I don't believe that work even can be accomplished and so don't waste the energy of my subconscious on fretting about it.

What fun.