03/11/22
Just a couple little things i’ve been thinking about for a while, written down to develop said thoughts, I hope you at least find some intrigue.
I had a thing happen a couple months ago that has stuck with me, I dont know if it really should have as much as it did but it is what it is.
I tend to drink a lot of water, probably too much to be honest with you. Sometimes though I will drink slightly less and feel the need to grab a drink during the night, as you do. I think I was doing something else and had not yet gone to sleep by say 4AM.
I crept downstairs to try not to wake my parents, and went into the kitchen. I could hear my dad coughing and getting up out of bed and heading to the kitchen, where I was. I got him some water too and gave it to him. He was still coughing away, it sounded very painful and definitely not something that i was too happpy that he was having to experience of course. He suffers from acid reflux, effectively he gets acid from his stomach into his throat I believe.
he was in his underwear, it would be mildly funny if it werent so sad to see him like that. He was leaned over the counter, nearly coughing up a long. Standing there in the room with him, I could feel his fragility, my father, a man I looked up to as a kid and felt could do anything, was in front of me wheezing.
Of course I am perfectly aware that everyone gets old and weaker, but I think in that moment it hit me just how quick it can happen. In one moment hes still just my dad, but a bit pudgier and with grey hair, and the next hes a frail old man who needs help. I was taken aback a bit, I didnt say or do anything disrespectful, I just got him some more water and some antacid tablets to help with his reflux. We stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, just cough…wheeze….cough….drink….wheeze. I probably should have rubbed his back or something but I think i was just taking in the situation. I do feel a little ashamed for not being more proactively supporting, I was just trying not to cause him any distress. He did talk about it, he described how he could feel it in his throat and how the medicine wasnt working very much or for very long.
Finally, after what I think was forty minutes or so, he had one last swig of water, and said he was going to try to sleep, and that I should get some rest too. That I did. He was fine in the morning, however I think I got a rare look at him unfiltered by his usual ‘im the dad’ self. Perhaps I shouldnt write this but I think that you may find it interesting and for myself its worth remembering.
I dont really know if i am a light sleeper, sometimes I fall asleep very quickly and only awake sometime after the heatdeath of the universe, other times it feels like I take forever to fall asleep, and awaken the moment that the a mouse somewhere in a nearby town yawns. I try not to look for labels and the like for these things. “oh i have insomnia” blah blah blah, I tend to look at that kind of thing with a certain level of distaste. At least in the sense that I think it fosters an inability to address the issue, with people with such tags attached often resigning themselves to their fates.
That was a slight tangent, onto the main portion of this second part.
I often find myself when drifting off to sleep, starting to dream but I am still in control, so when i consciously dont like a direction a dream is going i tend to ‘rewrite’ it, with myself almost as a narrator of sorts. “whilst he fell, he managed to grab onto a fire hydrant nearby to stop himself”. little interjections like that. At that point the dream breaks in a way, i’m not in complete control, but i’m like wrestling with the unconcious part of my mind over the narrative of the dream, typically this is because something bad is about to happen and im trying to get out of the situation, usually death is involved in some way, at least recently. Because of this back and forth I tend to get stuck repeating what ends up essentially being the same part, with different ways of getting out, only to be faced with the scenario again. After some time I awake and am able to remember it for a time before it fades, as all dreams do. Now this long preamble, as interesting as it is in itself (and i’d like to hear if similar happens to others), I have written all this to say this next thing is specifically NOT THAT. I get a certain feeling and awareness when I am fighting for control of the dream, this was not that at all, though i was aware enough to remember.
I had woke up at 5am one day, I think it was a weekday last week, the memory has been fading to be honest, which is part of why I felt the need to write it whilst the event/dream itself was still vivid.
After deciding that I wanted to go back to sleep, I laid in bed as you do, I hadnt been awake long so I could feel myself dozing off again. I was starting to fall asleep and my imagination started spinning up, I wasnt quite asleep to be unconcious entirely, but i was dreaming. It was another day, I was in the lounge of my house, I think I was standing and talking to my dad about something, I cant recall what but it was standard conversation, probably about something going on in the world or about guitars or the other things he likes. I dont want to say something like ‘and the whole world turned a greyish tint’ because it wasnt quite that dramatic, but I got a sense that something was off. I turned to look out the window and I could see an old man, now he didnt have a hunched back or anything, he looked very healthy, just you could tell he was old because of his almost perfect white hair and shortish beard. he didnt say anything, he was towards the edge of our driveway, and he just looked at me (bear in mind in real life i cant see that far). After we made eye contact, he just smiled and turned to walk away, before vanishing. I knew that wasnt something I had done consciously, and it didnt feel like a natural part of my dream.
I dont know who it was, I dont know what he wanted, and I dont know why he was there. I sort of froze afterwards, trying to connect the dots in my head, it didnt make any sense. Usually I find when something happens in a dream I am pretty in tune with what it means, ‘oh this happened because you’re stressed about that’ or ‘yeah dude, you’re pretty lonely right now’. things like that, but this, I had and have no idea. I didnt quite wake up, but I stirred in my mostly asleep state, and I did manage to dream again, however it was similar. I was talking to my dad in the lounge, but instead of that old man, normal people walking by started stopping and staring, and a group sort of peered around in the distance to look in at me in the same way, before walking off again within maybe 5 seconds. This was creepier, perhaps exasterbated by the encounter with the old man earlier in the prior version of the dream. At that point I woke up properly and tried getting on with my day. Seeing as I wrote this, I am still thinking about it, a bit over a week later I think.
I even considered ‘was that god?’ as a thought, because I genuinely have no clue. I’ve never been so unsure about a dream in my life.
Thanks for reading all this, there was not really a throughline as far as a theme goes or anything, just two things that have really been on my mind. It beats thinking about my ex all day every day though, so i’ll take it. Im still reading documentation on the forum software and best practice for implementing it, as well as working full time, so progress on that will be slow.
I hope you’ve all been well, and things are going okay in your own lives. I hope to type to you again.