I had dinner Saturday with a friend. She was already seated when I arrived.
“You look terrible,” she said, almost laughing. I didn’t disagree with her, but I was surprised it showed so easily.
I haven’t been sleeping well. When I do sleep, my dreams are often confusing. I wake up feeling as though I’ve been wrestling with something which leaves me exhausted. And I’ve been eating horribly, which makes it harder to sleep and makes me feel terrible when I’m awake. But I didn’t realize any of this showed on my face until my friend said so.
My life has felt lately as though I’m going through a dark hall of mirrors at a carnival. It’s not just a three-minute trip with a quick exit, though. I work here. I eat here and sleep here. Somehow, I’ve brought myself into a long nightmare in which things are distorted and scary — and I can’t find the exit.
When I woke up Saturday morning from another restless night, I found a note which I had made for myself at some point in the night. I don’t recall having this thought or making the note, but I make such notes in my sleep every now and then.
“Looking back on it now, I can see that she was afraid of intimacy,” I had written.
I must’ve been dreaming about her again.