i watched a video of dad spinning me round with his hands, me squealing like an excited piggy to altered images aged 2 in the living room. when he watched it he probably felt sad too that i am grown up now.

then i watched one of grandma. she picked me up and held me close and gave me a cuddle. she has been dead for 15 years and i didnt even remember her voice. i got as sad as ive been for a while but this time i cried.

then i fell asleep and dreamed earthquakes and swimming and shattered glass and deep baths.

but i also saw my friends back in cheshire floating around inside my head and when i opened my eyes i was at home.

in sleep is the only way...

i fell into a deep sleep this afternoon and while i was there, i turned round with tears in my eyes and found someone i hadnt seen for ten years standing at the door in my head.

she motioned to me, put her arm around me and walked me through an imagined city.

i asked her why she had come back for me and she said "we were never supposed to be sympathetic but i couldnt forget your big eyes"

...and i was so safe and unaware.

i knew my subconscious was just trying to offer me something i had lost in reality.

when i woke up it felt like i was drunk from my dreams and for a while i couldnt remember who and where i really was.

disorientated, i knew at the very least that i was pleased to have forgotten.

why am i so terrified of waking?

tossing and turning

Cliche as it might be, I realised last night that I found something I didnt know I had lost.

I am truly grateful for this, because to not realise how unhappy you are until it has left you is possibly for the best..

It struck me halfway through a sleepless night that I was thinking again as a young person with optimism, not someone who was slowly growing old and getting frustrated with everything in their life. I thought about some of the things that had made me see myself only as hopeless and insignificant, and I cried.

Partly because I didn't understand how someone who had (apparently) been so unhappy didnt cry anymore, and partly out of confusion, because I didn't feel sad about it, rather relieved and a little bit enlightened. I never like to cry in front of people, but i used to cry on my own a lot, and until it hit me i hadnt even noticed this had stopped. The same applies for talking in my sleep.

Instead of feeling upset and lonely, I counted all my blessings, which appeared mainly in the shape of friends I never expected to matter as much as they do.

:)

dogs and pregnancy

i have been having very strange dreams again.

i dream that dogs are smothering me... it always makes me uncomfortable but kind of safe.

i dream that i am pregnant. sometimes i think to myself in the dream "this cant be possible" and the baby just goes away with the notion that it couldnt possibly exist. one time i realised i had to get an abortion and it was so terrifying that i had to wake up...

these dreams are perhaps the result of sleeping in a very big dressing gown in a cold house and drinking too much herbal tea before bedtime.

canada canada canada

tonight i made a promise to myself that i would not let real life get in the way anymore.
i may have put myself into a self induced slumber for months in order to earn money to pursue a dream which i am not entirely sure why i am chasing.

perhaps i will lose myself completley instead of finding whatever it is i feel the need to follow.

but for now i have to restore some sort of balance,

so that at least if at the end of the rainbow there is nothing,

i have not just been watching the rain.

if but hopefully

when i have children i will smack them when they are ridiculous but also make sure they have an imagination, manners, 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day and absences from school for (only partially) educational days out.

the rest will have to weave itself i guess.

fastwind

i have spent years developing an interchangeable, fluid skin which both rips and thickens in odd layers at its own unpredictable discretion.

as i grow up, responsibility quietly compromises all of my dreams and sprinkles pessimism everywhere.

i boringly observe everything around me and only find any truth in nature.
the longer i spend around people my own age, the more i like my parents.

on some old cassette players, when you hit fast forward and rewind at the same time, they would become stuck and made a horrible repetetive clicking noise until you hit down harder on one button to put the other out of its misery.

i love useless self indulgent metaphors, they behave like laxatives.

ten hours

during this time i had a kitten biting my feet non stop for a ridiculously long time, and i hugged my dad so hard, crying uncontrollably to him that i was so happy to finally be home.

then i woke up.

dark silk

Stop looking into the filth of the night for your answers
It might weave spiders webs around your dreams
But murk is never what it seems...