Navel gazing

Last night I dreamed that I found a dead body on the sidewalk. It was the middle of the night and a friend was with me. For some reason we thought we were responsible. Maybe the body was still a little bit alive? I don't know. But we took the body and dumped it somewhere and I then spent the rest of my dream-life in abject fear that the police would hunt me down and send me to prison. In my dream I would read newspaper articles about the missing person, I'd scan police reports and lists of suspects. My name and my friend's name were on the list, but only as the people who had found the body. I went over and over the timeline in my brain, piecing out what I had done wrong, what I did do, what I didn't do, what I should have done. I hoped that one day the authorities would just forget about it and never focus in on me, but then I would remind myself that the books on murder were never closed. Someone would always be looking. I would have to live with this forever.

And then I woke up. Phillip was in the shower. Light was streaming through the window. And I was not carrying a huge secret that Phillip knew nothing about.

I just hate that feeling of hiding something. I have always been a Very Good Girl (well, except for that time when I had a boyfriend who had his own car) and I think the guilt of doing something Very Bad would pretty much crush me.

I've had that dream before, I know it. And others like it, too, because every couple of weeks the mere act of waking up floods me with relief. I was fairly anxious last night for no reason- perhaps the last couple of chapters of Harry Potter were making my heart race? Maybe I should start tracking my dreams to see if the freaky ones happen when I'm already nervous.

On a related note, I found this the other day as I was researching autism. I have a nephew on the higher functioning end of the autistic spectrum and I'm interested in the experiences of other autistics and families of autistics. This particular person (who is pretty amazing, go read her bio) described an onset of anxiety as she hit her teens:

The feeling was like a constant feeling of stage fright all the time. When people ask me what it is like I say, "Just imagine how you felt when you did something really anxiety provoking, such as your first public speaking engagement. Now just imagine if you felt that way most of the time for no reason." I had a pounding heart, sweaty palms, and restless movements. The "nerves" were almost like hypersensitivity rather than anxiety. It was like my brain was running at 200 miles an hour, instead of 60 miles an hour.

It was an odd sort of thrill for me to read that, as that's exactly how I describe it, only switch out "sweaty palms" for "insane muscle tension". It's not hypersensitivity for me (that's in direct reference to autism, I think), but maybe hypervigilance. I am always looking out for something to go wrong. The other shoe is going to drop. Did I do something wrong? Something bad is going to happen.

I have very clear memories of constantly counting my four brothers and sisters. We'd go to the mall (and I hated the [huge, fancy in my memories, several-storied] mall because I had (and sort of still do) a tall ceiling and tall building phobia YES I AM CRAZIER THAN YOU SUPPOSED) and I would keep my eye on everyone, totally afraid one of us would get lost. I had dreams about a sixth kid, a little brother, who we kept losing. And one time we did lose my brother Alex and I thought the world about caved in. (Even though, at age 8 or 9, I was convinced that my quality of life would vastly improve if only he DID get lost.)

It's not always like that, of course. And "hypervigilance" is a nice big all-encompassing word I like to use to hold all the things that I think make me anxious. To the extent that anxiety is not all about a chemical imbalance in your brain, it's these things, for me, that I try to hold together. And when that doesn't work, and dammit you're not going to let a racing heart keep you from watching The Amazing Race finale or reading the end of the new Harry Potter book, you sweetly ask your husband to dig his elbows into the knots in your back and you breathe a little slower.

I don't know what this post is about, exactly, but sometimes I'd rather write about the things I'm really thinking about rather than snarking about my latest encounter with the universe of customer service. Not that I don't love to snark. Watch out, United States Post Office- you're next.