nightmares and reality-blurring

Since I have been using a medication which alters my brain chemistry, there have been a few side-effects that are disturbing, but not enough to make me decide to give it up for a lost cause. I'm still very ambivalent about the whole process, and some days it's only the lack of crying that really tells me that things are different. I used to cry over just about anything, and now it's got to be really major for me to get veklempt. Again, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. Am I an MK-Bot now? No, but neither am I the leaky faucet of yore.

My dreams have been quite different on the whole since this experiment started. Usually I dream of old houses with labrynthine hallways and rooms, precarious staircases and a deadline to pack and leave, or else something terrible will happen. I still have these occasionally, but most of the time my dreams are so close to reality, mundane day-to-day activities, that I wake up and I'm not sure if I've actually done the things I dreamed about or whether I need to do them again for real this time. It's disturbing in a different way than the average hellish fantasy-land experience. I really didn't call that person, or buy those groceries, or vacuum the floor (that's an obvious one--it's far from a daily experience).

The nightmares have gone from sadly disturbing (a college friend becoming a heroin addict and no one wanting to help), to infuriating (teaching a third-grade class of the worst children in the world, yelling at them the entire school day and no one listening), to a dream so disgusting that I was afraid to look in the mirror this morning. I am hesitant to say what happened, but I guess if I write it down it might seem just absurd and hence, less disturbing. My face and skin started growing what looked like large bean sprouts all over, the kind used in Chinese food stir-fry, sprouting quickly and painfully and growing longer by the minute. They weren't bean sprouts, just whitish growths. I felt them and looked at myself in the dream, and felt sick to my stomach and completely repulsed. I woke up praying for God to have mercy on me, to take away the horror of it.

The online dream dictionary I looked at today said this: To dream that your skin is covered with rashes or other skin deformity, signifies your fear in facing a harsh reality. Well there's been a bit of that lately, and not a little bit of revulsion and anger and fear as well. But I don't know, it felt more like this was something coming from inside of me, something so repugnant and fearsome that was produced by my own body. I really just need to ask my husband what he thinks, as he is usually spot-on with dream interpretation. He usually says something brilliant, and then I feel like an idiot for not being able to see what was obviously the underlying message of the dream.

So that I won't leave us on such a horrific note, I did have one really pleasant dream about a week ago, which hardly ever happens. I was swimming in a huge pool, and unlike most swimming dreams I have, I actually knew how to swim and was enjoying myself. I got to the middle of the pool, and met a handsome guy swimming too. We were instantly in love and I felt like I knew him forever. But he had to go, and far away at the other side of the pool, he waved to me in a bashful sort of way. I didn't know his name or anything. The next day I got a box that was divided into little sections, and each one had a little teensy drawing and some microscopic writing in it, all done by this person I was in love with. As I was looking through the treasure, a secret service man came up to me and started badgering me with questions: "How long have you known the prince? Where did you meet him? How long have you been meeting together? He talks about you all the time!" I looked down the hallway and saw him again, with the same bashful wave and smile, as if to say sorry about the bother. This person I met happened to be the prince of England (not the real one, mind you), and I was in love. The oddest thing was I was still married to D, and rationally and calmly discussed my feelings with him, and asked for his advice, only feeling slightly bad about the oddity of it all.

D's interpretation was interesting (when I woke up, I mean). He said that this was about ideal things happening, me getting to do things I've always wanted, and still feeling a bit guilty. Since England is, in a way, my favorite country, the ideal person in England would be the prince. Naturally one falls in love with princes, and the secret service person was just my old self-doubts and natural buzz-killing tendencies in a human form. Somehow that person always says one should not be allowed to enjoy oneself, that there is something inherently bad in it, perhaps my inner Puritan rearing its ugly head. Instead of giving in to him, I felt impervious and protected from the threats, since I knew I was loved by the prince.