The Lines Begin to Blur

Wednesday June tenth. 9pm. Got into a fight with Anna at work. About something stupid; the right temperature for tea or something. I forget. Why can’t I ever get along with people? Especially people I need badly to get along with…or people I like. Gym this morning; pulled my shoulder. It was hurting all morning.

Thursday June eleventh. 2am. Soaked in sweat. My heart’s racing so fast it hurts and I can barely catch my breath. Dr B_ asked me to jot down my nightmares for her so here goes:

I’m lying supine in an elevator and there’s a fire in the bottom of the shaft. I’m being roasted slowly, but it’s rather pleasant than otherwise. There are butterflies swarming round my ears. It gets hotter. They start melting. It feels like hot wax. And then I’m lying in a desert with little holes like swiss cheese in the sand all around me. Strange creeping things emerging and investigating me and crawling up my trousers and down my collar. Into my ears and mouth. I can feel little legs going over my tongue; down my throat. It gets stuck. I try to swallow but I can’t. I can’t breathe.

Sunday June fourteenth. 6pm. Fired on Friday. Noone appreciated my putting beetles in Anna’s purse. Dr B_ would call it regressive behaviour. I don’t remember ever doing that before though. Maybe I’m regressing to someone else’s childhood. For some reason I don’t feel any concern; I know I won’t be able to pay rent this month but I can’t bring myself to care enough to do anything about it. Maybe I’ll run back to mother. That would be regressive.

Monday June fifteenth. 1am. Another dream. I woke up in the stairwell this time. Lucky my neck’s intact:

The office is on fire and I’m trying to get back in because there’s something important I’ve forgotten and I can’t remember what but I know it’s in the tea room and I get there and I’m feeling withered and there’s no children or cats or anything and then I remember that it’s something I left in the printer so I get it and try to get down again but the fire’s getting closer and my paper catches and it’s gone and I crouch down sobbing on the landing the smoke is suffocating and I still can’t remember what it was.

11am. Work just called wanting to know where I was. Apparently I’m not fired. Pity. I was enjoying the prospect of a holiday. I’ll have to apologise to Anna.

10pm. Another stupid day. Stopped to get coffee and there was an obnoxious song on the radio in the cafe and I told the barista so and she wouldn’t turn it off and an older guy told me to stop harassing her and I nearly hit him. Then Anna told me there had been no beetle incident and suggested contemptuously that I was losing touch. I nearly hit her too. She has such a tempting nose. Sometimes I want to kiss it; more often I want to bite it off and pin it on my wall.

Tuesday June sixteenth. 2am. I can’t sleep. I’m scared of dreaming again. I’m scared of waking up and not knowing whether I’m actually awake. I’m scared of weeping and cringing and toiling my way through a year of my life and then wake up and it’s all lost. I need certainty and control.

Thursday June eighteenth. 10pm. I went to a restaurant this afternoon on the other side of town meaning to get dinner but found myself wandering down the alley and into the back kitchen instead. Three or four staff with less English between them than an artichoke gathered round gesticulating anxiously and I grinned at them. And I went home and I’d run out of pills but I was glad because I didn’t want to sleep.

Friday June nineteenth. 3am. I tried. I sat in the dark and counted each time a ghost brushed my toes but I couldn’t help it and I wake up in the street.

I’m in a morgue and walking along endless rows of cold boxes and I can hear silence in front of me and muffled laughter closing in behind and I know they’ll tire of the charade one day and then I’d rather be dead and I’m running and running down between the shelves and I’m trying to find the entrance and I can’t breathe and my throat is tight and my fingers are starting to tingle and I see the door and I burst through and I breathe and I’m out in the cold dead outside and the doors slam locked behind me.

Saturday June twentieth. 3pm. I was supposed to see Dr B_ today but I stayed back. What’s the point? I think she loves to feed off my nightmares. She’s writing a paper so I suppose I’m good subject matter for her. She wants me to get worse.

Wednesday July ninth. 7pm. Anna was wearing a funny hat so I knew it must be a dream and I was glad because I’d realised for once, so I thought I’d make the most of it and I went to kiss her because it was a dream and now I’m being disciplined for harassment. I didn’t even get a kiss. But now I’ll know; as long as I’m still in trouble I’m still dreaming. No more confusion. I guess this is only a dream diary I’ve got now though. I wonder if there’ll be anything left when I wake up? How much will I remember? Dr B_ says we forget most of our dreams.

Thursday July tenth. 8pm. Went to work today acting normal in case I’d woken up last night but I hadn’t and I got called in to do more nonsense with the old fellow from HR. His nose is entirely boring. I amused myself on the way home by bumping into passers by at intervals and enjoying their confused apologies. It’s liberating to be alone in a shadow world. I don’t ever want to wake up.

Saturday July twelfth. 11pm. Spent all day in the watch house. Knowing it wasn’t real didn’t make it much better. I can still smell everything. I was arrested for public nuisance; all I did was sing in the mall and I know my dream voice is much more pleasant to the ear than my mundane one. Which sounds like a cantankerous warthog. I blotted my diary. It doesn’t matter. It’ll be gone when I wake. I’m getting tired of this dream. I want to get high. 

Tuesday July fifteenth. 4am. I need to wake up. I can’t bear this. I think I’ve found the way. A pair of Anna’s stockings (I stole them from her purse yesterday) and the rail in the shower and I’ll sit on the edge of the sink. If this doesn’t work nothing will.