Thursday, February 21, 2008

Meme me up, Scotty


Okay, so Emaw tagged me. I'm supposed to give you all an account of a Twilight Zone Moment in my life. I've been thinking about it and I can't really pinpoint one moment. But there are some strange things about me that make me feel like my life is some experiment of evil doers who are out to creep me out, and I will share them with you to let you know how paranoid I am:

The number 1134 has haunted me my whole life. I am an avid reader of digital clocks - I can find meaning in any displayed time - military or otherwise (I also grew up in the time when pagers were all the rage, so spelling things out with numbers was a honed skill of mine). . . and 11:34 upside-down is 'hell'.
My mom's water broke at 11:34 the night before she gave birth to me (and who writes that time down in their kid's baby book . . . now, really!), the book Uchigikishu was written in Japan in the year 1134 (do you know what that means!?!), I once guessed that there were 1,134 jelly beans in a jar - and I didn't win the contest (do you see a pattern here?), after my roommate at FSU got pregnant, they moved me to the 11th floor into - you guessed, it - room 1134 (yeah, an ALL GIRL floor!), and this one time, I bought 100 dozen fake diamond rings (don't ask), there were a lot that were broken so I counted them to make sure I only paid for the ones that weren't - you guessed it: one thousand, one hundred and thirty four rings were intact.

Creepy, right?

I also get really scared at movies . . . not like Freddy vs Jason or People Under the Stairs (won't even watch those movies - I like my heart to continue beating, thank you very much) but like Schindler's List and Jurassic Park - oh, and Independence Day. I have a hard time separating myself from the action in movies - I scream for help, I run down the aisles, I hide behind the chairs, and won't put my feet on the ground in fear of someone grabbing my ankles and pulling me into their hell that I'm witnessing on the screen. I get a lot of people whispering that it will be okay, offering their hand to squeeze, or yelling that it's not happening to me . . . and when finally my nightmare is over and the credits are rolling, I get the joy of people staring at me or looking in my general vicinity for the crazy girl in the back of the theater.

I think the reason I get really scared at movies is the incredibly lucid dreams I have. Night Terrors is what they called them when I was young, and pieces of shit is what I call them today. I have reoccurring dreams that involve impending doom, my running away from it as well as my inability to find proper hiding spaces, made up prophecies from different scriptures, me sleepwalking (I once woke up in my front yard hugging the Magnolia tree). Even when I wake up from these dreams, I am not in reality . . . it takes me a few minutes to calm myself down - sometimes waking up Elle to cuddle with me (a 5 year old's sleepy jokes are SO much better than a teddy bear!). They don't happen as often as they used to - but they suck just the same.
One dream I still continue to have has these face masks - you know, the drama masks for comedy and tragedy - and they're supposed to represent some awful place where people go to die and then come back to life. When people fall in these masks - kinda like quick sand (another thing I've feared my whole life and dream about often) - they're gone for like 3 days and come back at their funeral to terrorize everyone that has come back to memorialize them - and I'm always the only one who finds a problem with them walking around punching, kicking, berating, stabbing and yelling at people - everyone else kinda just walks around with big grins on their faces and the drama masks are always represented somewhere . . . and its always someone I kinda know that is the one that dies - never someone close to me or someone who has died. Weird - I hate that dream.
And I always have dreams where I'm running away from something and trying to hide - those are the ones where I wake up the most scared . . . always before I'm found or before I am killed or right when I fall and can run no further.
I had a dream once where I killed my neighbor and someone was coming up the walkway to the house, but I couldn't get her body to fit under the couch, so I started chopping her up and putting her body parts under the cushions . . . so when this person came in, we sat down and visited and she left with a big blood stain on her pants - and I really felt bad about her pants, but not really about my neighbor whose bloody body I was sitting on.
I once asked my doctor what I should do about these dreams - he told me to have a glass of wine before bed. But drunk dreaming is even more dangerous . . .

I'm sure there is some dream interpreter out there that is taking this in and thinking - wow, this girl has issues. I'm here to say, sure - but, hey, you interpret people's dreams for a living . . . whacko!! =)

Strange things happen to everyone every day. I know that if I ever encountered a ghost or ever had some freaky thing really chase me - I'd be the first to lay down and wait to die. I'm a wimp, that's for sure, not a fighter. But I'd scream my bloody lungs out . . . cause, hey - thats fun!

6 comments:

FletcherDodge said...

Uhhmmmm... Mmmkaayyy...Remind me never to tag you in a meme again.

Anonymous said...

wow - sorry to hear it.

from what little i know of adult night terrors in adults, it is probably OSA related - obstructive sleep apnea. at least, that seems to be a contributing factor. you need to sleep with a bunch of strangers watching you for a week or so to be sure...

*ahem* - sleep with a bunch of doctors...

as for the dreams of doom and destruction, i've also had those all my life. they say it's fairly common in children of drunks: high anxiety levels all their early lives, abuse, yadda yadda yadda...

however, 'racial' memory - ie, Jungian archetypes, makes as much sense to me as well: that is, if the 'apocalypse' represents the intrusion of the Self into conscious realization. what 'people' (theorists and that damned ilk) lean toward is the notion that the coming of the self is always an upheaval and so an individual’s experience of the archetype tends toward the “apocalypse” which bodes catastrophe; ergo, 'end of the world', alien invasion, zombies, mutants and neo-conservative dreams. ; ' )

these same theorists say that the dreams do not necessarily indicate psychic catastrophe for the dreamer but may, if properly understood, refer to "the coming into visibility of manifestations of the Self - the nucleus of the psyche - and present the opportunity for an enlargement of the psyche."

it's not a bug, it's a feature!

...of course, that's the first thing on your mind when you've woke screaming in the dead of the night, right?

anyhow, i would go sleep with the ...doctors and at least rule out OSA.

i'm glad your girl doesn't suffer night terrors: my eldest started right about 4 and will - unless she's outside of the mean - probably continue until 10 or so. My littlest is nearly 2 and a half, so no issues there...yet.

"The D" said...

Strange... That book you referenced, the Japanese one... Takes me to a Japanese web site... I don't know about everyone else but I don’t read Japanese.

KC Sponge said...

emaw - yeah, thanks - the #1 motivation of my post.

doc - I've gotten over the part of my life where I thought sleeping with strangers would solve all my problems . . . =) My parents never drank until like 4 years ago - though watching my dad drinking a "strong" strawberry daiquiri is quite unnerving, and my moms dance moves after her margarita are quite unhuman -frightening is a little strong. =) And once I can scoop through all the psycho-babble, I'll get back to you on how I feel about the rest of your comment!

The D - I know - creepy, eh? Its like how Jin must feel when all this shit is going on on the island. BTW - nice pic. =)

Anonymous said...

kc sponge -

yeah, no: i really meant it about sleeping with the docs: they'll wire you up and stand around all night (well, some unlucky resident will) while the machines record whatever it is they record to determine if you have OSA, though i'm told that some symptoms are obviously noticable. it can't hurt; maybe there's a study at ku med or something. at least rule it out.

don't worry about the jungian theory; that's just my take on the persistence of common dna - common dreams -common memories among people of all race, creeds, colors, sports teams, etc etc etc...you milage will vary.

and i'm sorry to say i have to bail: upper manglement just stopped by to inform me i will be at a meeting at 11th and K street tomorrow at 1:00 pm - which means up at 4 to board the 7 o'clock flight to BWI, rent a car and hurtle down the beltway to wdc...and i'm not at all ready.

definitely my loss.

have fun.

Christian Patriot said...

I, too, have been haunted by the number '1134' for as long as I can remember...

Here's what I have noticed, though: when the religious area of my life is on the right track, the hauntings go away. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe not. To dismiss the question altogether, though, would also admit dismissal of the force that lets (or makes) us see the clock at precisely 11:34.

Some of the dreams sound familiar as well. Not exactly the same, but very close. I find myself waking up on purpose sometimes just to "reset" my dream pattern. I love my sleep - and I don't want to share it with an unpleasant dream!

I'm taking in all the happenings in Kansas City and saving you all the trouble . . . I'll let you know whether to soak it up or squeeze it out!!