D-75 Night Terrors

I recall having several night terrors over the course of the past six-or-so years, and I remember them being absolutely horrible.  The last night terror I had was just a little over a month ago, and it happened on a random night's sleep in my dorm room.  I will recount the story later, as I wanted to highlight a particular story I found online during my search for a possible meaning behind my nightmare.

So, I wake up in my bed (this is at my parents house, a fair few years ago), and I decide I am really, really thirsty. So I head down stairs for a drink. I start walking down stairs, until I hit the 14th step (I'm Autistic and OCD, knowing how many stairs their are is important to me). This was odd because I have 13 steps, so I continue walking. I get to the 42nd step and I notice that I'm now in fact walking up stairs, but in the same direction. Keep in mind, that I am in sleep state, dream state. I'm very susceptible, and rather dim ;D. I continue up these steps, but then I notice that I've been flipped upside down, and I'm walking on my hands, up the stairs. The path spirals, and I feel my self spinning. This scares me a fair bit so... 

I wake up in my bed. Startled and straight up. I look around and I'm relieved I just had a bad dream. I go to put the light on, but it doesn't work. I go to check in my wardrobe for a new light bulb when I look at a loose wire dangling from a shelve. I go to put it up when I notice it's a stretched out face, like in 'The Scream'. I jump back, and feel hands at my spine, I turn and...
I wake up in my bed. By now I'm getting a little worried, so I stay in bed. I hear planes outside. I look outside the window and I see bombs falling. I go to jump out of my bed to warn my family but fall flat on my face, because my legs are chained. I start screaming for my family, when my little brother passes through the closed door, ghost like, grins, and turns into a plane... demon... thing. I hear an explosion, and... well, I feel it, I won't go further into that one...

I wake up in my bed. Screaming this time. My (now ex) Girlfriend is there, and she comforts me. She calms me down after I explain it all and she tells me it's just a bad dream. I'm much calmer now. She kisses me and we get romantically involved. Not to go into too much detail, she's on top (I did say it gets risque). She says something that I know she'd never say, and I realise that she was never in the bed with me, she wasn't sleeping around that night. I tell her this, and this must be another dream, and she stops, dead. Silent. She screams and melts on top of me, her arms in my hands. I scream and...

I wake up, in my bed. By now I've cottoned on to what is happening. I keep screaming and the duvet gets tighter around me. The more I scream the more it does this, whilst figures dance on the ceiling, dangling marionettes and laughing. I sink deep into the bed and...

I wake up, in my bed. It is about here that a lot of the sequences are fuzzy. I remember trying to escape, trying to ignore, laughing it off, none of it to any effect. I remember seeing a lot of figures, and various animals (snakes etc), and some calmer ones like the first ones, where I have to find what's happening. Other than that, not much, until...

I wake up, in my bed. This time I head straight for the door, full speed. I'm getting out. I go to run down the stairs when I see my step dad in front of them, kneeling. I trip on him and fly down the stairs. I try to get up but I'm getting heavier and heavier with each breath. I notice I'm turning into melting rock. I head into the living room and my step dad is there again, kneeling. I go towards him, when I feel something turn me around and push me over him. I look up, and standing over him is something in the shape of a person... the only way I can describe it is a different shape of light... It has a blade for a limb... what I assume is a limb. It raises said limb and...
I wake up, in the living room. My body feels like it's been cut all over, I'm in tears. I fall to the ground and just cry it out (I'm man enough to admit it). I scream, but no one was in the house that night. When I regain my senses, I turn on all the lights, pick up the guitar and play, play the night and day away. I didn't dare sleep for a few days after that one.

One thing I have noticed is the only way I can consistently know if I am in the dream sequence or not, and that is the light. Everything will work normal if I try it (unless it's going to scare the heck out of me), but the light never works. If it is on, it stays on. If it is off, it stays off. Even if it changes anything, it does it wrong(changes colour, or the 'shape'... again not sure how to describe that bit etc). It's really the least scary way I can tell where I am.

Source: MisterA 

D-249 Sometimes

Sometimes before I go to sleep I wish I wouldn't wake up the next morning.

Where is Comfort when you need it most?

D-279 When I was a young man

"When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it. And I had love, but I did not feel it. Many decades would pass before I understood the meaning of all three. And now, the twilight of my life, this understanding has passed into contentment.

Love, liberty, and time: once so disposable, are the fuels that drive me forward. And love, most especially, mio caro. For you, our children, our brothers and sisters. And for the vast and wonderful world that gave us life, and keeps us guessing. Endless affection, mia Sofia.

Forever yours,
Ezio Auditore."

D-282 What frightens you? What do you fear?

I was having late-night facetime with a youth pastor that I know from 8 years ago and wanted to share what he told me today. It may or may not apply to you, but read on.

Everyone has fears, hurts and scars from past experiences that we may or may not want to recall from memory.  And those things may affect how we interact with those that are around us - some close, some not so close - and sometimes cause us to become closed, to shy away from becoming emotionally vulnerable towards others.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  There is nothing wrong with being human, being able to feel hurt, and setting up one's own self defense mechanism against possibly risking being hurt again.

Abe, the youth pastor, said the best thing you can do is give your friend a knife and turn your back to him. It's a little morbid and dramatic example, but what he wanted to say was that there is nothing to be gained by not willing to become vulnerable (again) to others.  There is nothing to be gained when you do not invest your own trust in others.  And maybe that friend can reciprocate and be willing to become vulnerable to you as well.  Maybe you can find a brother or a sister in the midst of everything, like a gem in the desert.

One can be lucky and stumble upon such gems/persons, but in almost all cases, you have to be the one knocking on other people's doors, because 99.9% of the time, they won't be knocking on yours (or anyone else's).

But remind yourself that in order to love others, one must love him/herself first.

Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson

it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us

 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson

D+571 / D-304 Examining the Presence of Music in a Starbucks at Harvard Square

Prompt: In an attempt to be aware of the presence and function of music in our lives...

After paying for the tall, hot light roast at the counter, I took my mug of coffee and proceeded to carefully and gently snake my way through the caffeine-hungry crowd of the laptop-hugging, plugged-in academics and office workers in order to find myself a seat on the second floor of a Starbucks coffee store at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  To be honest, I myself was not so much different from the others.  As soon as I sat myself at one of the bars, I instinctively reached for the laptop in my backpack, set it up on the table, and attempted to start a joyless race for productivity - just like most all the others on the floor of Starbucks.  It was (and still is) funny how a coffee shop at Harvard Square has become something like a public library full of people uninterested in social interaction and pretty much any outside source of distraction.  Their earphones and headphones were a clear sign that said to others: “Please don’t disturb me.”  But, what was there to disturb them?  It was ironic in the sense that the floor was mostly quiet except for the rumbling of the coffee grinder and the small pockets of conversations here and there.

Not too long after having settled into my slightly uncomfortable place at the bar, I noticed a trio of musicians setting up for a small gig ways behind me and at a spacious corner of the floor.  I turned my head to observe them more fully: a red-haired lady and a brown-skinned man, both seemingly in their early twenties, each had a ukulele in their hands, while an Asian boy brandished a pair of steel brushes whilst sitting behind a basic drum set.  After a few more minutes of finalizing their equipment, the trio was ready.  The girl cleared her throat before turning on the microphone.

 “H-Hello everyone,” she said.  Nobody greeted her back except for a cheery young black girl sitting in front of them.  What an odd sight!  I surveyed the rest of the floor, and apart from a few turned heads, the rest probably didn’t even bat an eye after stealing a quick glance of the amateur musicians that drove all the way over from Florida.  After a brief announcement of their band name and their genre, they proceeded to perform for the crowd some pleasant songs.  (Please forgive me - I cannot recall their band name.)  Along with a few others in the room, I gave them my full attention.  However, as each song came to an end, the rather uninterested crowd was able to afford only a few pairs of hands for applause.  Such a painful sight forced me to join in on the clapping.

 After about four songs in total, the girl gave a brief introduction of each of the band members, reminded us of the band name, and bid us farewell before starting to pack up their belongings.  I don’t think most people cared or even listened.  Their attention was stilled affixed to their individual laptop screens and e-book readers.

 Was their music defective?  I clearly do not think so.  Yet, it is unclear how the soft crooning of her voice and the gentle strumming of the ukuleles became a source of distraction, a disturbance, if not annoyance, to most of the people in the coffee shop.  I must then assume that the band’s music did not provide pleasure for many people’s ears in that room; the music was largely ignored.  

Then, what about the music flowing from their earphones and headphones?  The music being played from iTunes, Pandora, or Spotify - what purpose did it serve?  Were they only selectively using music as a means of concentration, motivation, and/or neutralizing emotions?  Has music become so commercialized, so accessible, and so abundant in supply that it is now a mere knob, a customizable setting for our ears?  Would it be elitist to judge here?  I do feel a little uncomfortable condemning others for doing something suggestively sacrilegious - yet harmless - that I am guilty of doing as well.  Hence, I prefer to keep these questions open.

Instead, I wonder what it would take in order to learn to appreciate the value of our privileges, including music.  I recall the absence of many sources of pleasure and comfort during my service in the Marine Corps in Korea, and music was definitely one of the things I missed dearly.  However, I learned to fully appreciate those things only after they have been taken away from me for a long period of time.  Yet again, in a free world, it would be a draconian idea to divest music away from the public to help them realize its value - something that might exist only in the realm of science fiction.

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 A lot of the things we do are part of our everyday life and sometimes we even don’t notice them. They are not valuable anymore since they are something simple, something usual. They are not unique anymore. They are something we take for granted, something we are used to with. Do we appreciate the existence of air? No, we don’t. Do we appreciate the ability to walk? No, we don’t, because we do not know what it would be if this ability of ours is taken away. Do we appreciate the existence of the water? We don’t, but the Arabian do, just because they know what is to live with the lack of water. We start to appreciate the value of something after we lose it, meanwhile it is something we can have anytime we want, it is not something special, it is something ordinary.

We learn to appreciate the value of something after we lose it, because we do not know what it would be if we didn’t have this thing at the first place, we don’t know what it would be if we had to work for it or to fight for it. We had it from the very begining so what’s the big deal if we lose it, well obviously not everything has a price and after it is lost, it can’t be returned back. That’s why we must learn to appreciate what we have, because if we didn’t have it in first place, our live could be different.

 - denimcho @ WP