Here at Top Comments we welcome longtime as well as brand new Daily Kos readers to join us at 10pm Eastern. We strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find!
Those are avid Twilight Zone fans will recognize the title of this diary as the title of an episode from season 1 of the original show. In the episode, a man refuses to sleep because he thinks he will die from one of his dreams. My diary tonight will focus on dreams but in a different way and will pick up from my diary last week.
Last year, I wrote a diary about a COVID scare I had in early April where the nurse, who comes to give me a weekly infusion, decided to see me and other patients while his wife was being tested after being exposed to the coronavirus. Both he and his wife would test positive, and he would be hospitalized. He was visibly unwell while he was in my house. Likely the only thing that saved me from getting COVID was him wearing an N95 mask.
No surprise that I spent the next two weeks freaking out and having multiple anxiety attacks. One side effect of anxiety for me is excessive dreaming. This also happens when I fall into a depressive cycle. During this particular episode, I had 2-4 dreams per night. The dreams kept waking me up between each of them as well. There wasn’t any theme to the different dreams I was having but I do remember some nights they were serialized dreams. Sleep was a premium for me during these two weeks which I am sure only caused more anxiety and thus, more dreams
Like the character in The Twilight Zone episode, anxiety and depression makes me not want to sleep. While I am not worried about dying in my sleep, I do fear the next day will be worse than the current one and by not sleeping the day never changes in my mind. In a weird counterbalance to this, I have never gone 24hrs straight without sleeping. I have come close a few times but somehow always found a way to get a “nap” in before the 24 hours ring. Even my anxiety cannot cause me to break this particular record of mine.
Do any of you have odd quirks that arise when you are anxious?
Diarist reserves all rights to his original writing only. Community material is not covered by this ©
Now onto the tops!