draw your dream out...

speaking of dreams, i had one the other night that is just one of the strangest ever for me...i'll share so you can get an idea of what my brain does with me.

i was in a large school, and my son was there in kindergarten. there had been wolf sightings around the area, so some very large burly guys with bloody aprons took care of the problem by killing off the wolf pack. they became a slight bloodthirsty, i guess, because in a large room next to my son's kindergarten class, there were high piles of dead animals, stretched long and laid on top of each other like a wall.

i was really angry, obviously, about all the dead animals and also because it was right next to the classroom, and kids could be so traumatized by all of it, so i went into the room to have at whoever was in charge. when i entered the room i saw that there were not only lots of wolves, but also monkeys, bears, baboons, and other wild animals, all killed by gunshot or head smashing. there was even a water buffalo---whose head moved as i spotted him. he lumbered onto his feet and ran out of the room and down the hall. all of the other "dead" animals remained still, but all of their eyes turned to the buffalo and watched him escape...and a baboon on one of the piles collected himself, gunshot in his head, and darted out of the room screeching- i could hear kids screaming all up and down the halls...

so. there it is. a slice of my dreamtime....not every night is that dramatic, but even with less crazy dreams, my head is still on overtime, and i wake exhausted. i have told this dream story 3 times now, and i think it's fading. i was close to drawing it when i thought it might not leave my head, but i'm giving it another day or 2 to wear out on its own. in the past, i have drawn very rough sketches of bad dreams and such, and they seriously disappear. not from my memory, but from the place in my head where they matter. art is good...absolutely necessary for me and so very good ;)

death of a hallucination

zoloft was one of the only antidepressants that ever worked for me for more than a few months. i remember when i first started taking it everything was so pretty and extra colorful~ oral rose-colored glasses....i used to sit on the porch and stare at the woods across the lot. the dizziness from beginning new meds made me have visions of shadows that rose above the treeline....i called it "people over the trees". sometimes they were funny, and other times they made me feel like they were watching me. (changing meds is a joy, huh?)

i made this in my journal as a way to smile at that time in my life. even though i was literally scared of the dining room chairs, i was able to take a small thing like the feeling i'm being watched and remember the times i felt it was funny that these shadows were staring at me...

in one sentence, i can say that my art erased a recurring hallucination i had during a dark time. instead of writing about it, i drew a picture of what i was "seeing and feeling". it never bothered me again.

that is a powerful tool. writing about it would have given it more energy, but drawing it brought it to the surface and made me confront it. i have kept the drawing. where many would have wanted to destroy it, i didn't want to burn it or trash it because it was my validation.  a reminder that i can succeed at calming fractions of my chaos.

brain energy

One of the documentaries i recently watched was about how 25% of our energy is used by our brains.  no WONDER i'm exhausted!  My brain works OT 24/7 and i have figured out (by nurturing my "dream consciousness" over many years) that i actually criticize and analyze my dreams as i am having them. So not only am i obssessing over daily stress and fantasies every hour that i sleep, i am also trying to pick apart elements of the dreams that don't make sense to me or that i want to try to alter. control freak? sure. OCD? absolutely. how much of my energy is being used by my brain? sometimes i feel it could be well over 50%.

it's about time that i have become more aware of my brain's requirements. i'm not naiive about how my brain misfires, which most of the time makes it more challenging to operate. knowing what is going on, but having no clue how to change it or how to make the irrational thinking patterns decrease is maddening!