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5:20am February 4, 2013

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

So I wake up. Above the covers. Therefore freezing cold (it’s below freezing and somehow I have air conditioning on?????). Therefore bad headache and pain everywhere.

Then, after I pull some blankets around me. I think back on the nightmare I was having. And the entire fucking purpose of the thing seems to be to say to me:

“Shut up. No matter what you say, it will be wrong. Even if you switch sides, even if you’re on no sides, no matter if you change your mind. You’ll always be wrong. Because you’re an idiot incapable of ever being right no matter what you say. Hell, even when you’re right, you’re wrong.”

My tongue is thawing out. Yes my tongue had felt ice cold when I woke. So did my eyeballs. So did everything. How the hell did I end up falling asleep above the covers on a night like this? I mean I guess I know why my nightmares incorporated a lot about a new ice age. But yikes.

This isn’t just uncomfortable either. Even though I’m now warmed up, the cold has made all of my joints decide they’re going to hate me simultaneously. That doesn’t just instantly go away when I’m warm. It persists a long time after, so there’s this sense that the cold doesn’t leave my bones even after the cold has left my bones. Lovely.

I guess I got what I wished for all day – to be so sleepy I’d fall asleep and get some rest awhile regardless of what happened. I needed that. But I’m not sure I quite needed to fall asleep before I could even pull the covers over myself. At least I had time to get the bipap on, I guess. I don’t remember what happened when I went to sleep, not even a little. I just woke up freezing with the bipap pushing lots of freezing air into my lungs, in the frantic mode it enters when I’m having tons of central apneas.

Blankets feel wonderful now, by the way. All day before this, I’d felt terrible sleepy but unable to get a wink of sleep in no matter how much it felt like I couldn’t stay awake. But I guess finally it happened and I remember nothing. Except waking up aware of every damn joint in my body because they all have that horrible achey feeling cold gives them, even when warmed up. I can feel joints I didn’t even know I had! It was the combination of cold and not moving enough while sleeping.

So then, nightmares involving climate change and breathing problems and being wrong about everything no matter what I say and no matter how right I am. Because sometimes my brain is sadistic and likes to add PTSD to injury.

Now I’m getting sleepy enough again to get snatches of weird dream scenes intruding on my writing. I hope this time when I wake up I’ll feel better. Given that I am curled up with quilts and big fluffy blankets around me. And given that the dream snippets seem to be encouraging me to have opinions and write about them. Maybe bitter cold causes sadistic PTSDish dreams? I don’t know.