February 20, 2002
10:07am

As usual, my body is acting up. It always does this to me during the middle of the semester, when all my classes start putting on the pressure. My immune system is desperately trying to fight off infestation from the deadly flu bugs of my coworkers, my skin seems to be having an allergic reaction to something, symptoms of my anxiety disorder are resurfacing (which is not good), my blood sugar level is all funky, and I appear to be developing a facial tick. I'll be surprised if I don't end this semester with an ulcer.

I wish I understood why I'm such a nervous person. I've never handled stress well. It's so ironic that people often come to me for advice when they're freaking out. I wish I could handle my own stress as well as I handle other people's stress.

I had some strange dreams last night. I don't remember most of the details. In the first one, I was hanging out with some teenagers I've never seen before. Some kind of argument caused them to start killing each other. The last thing I remember about that dream is dodging bullets and hiding behind a car door.

I remember the second dream a little better. I was a teenager again and I had just moved into some small New England town. I was wandering through the woods on my way to my new school when I met a chatty boy who told me something about the lake. He was about ten-years-old and looked like a chubby little Harry Potter.

When we finally arrived at school I immediately made some new friends. Well, they weren't really new. They were the same people I had gone to high school with in reality, but they were new to me in the dream. They gave me a tour of the school and the chubby boy came along. As time passed, I grew more uncomfortable with having him around. He began clinging to me and acting like I was his girlfriend. He was really starting to scare me.

The tour of the school ended in the basement. (Why they decided to take me there, I don't know.) There were some steps leading up to a small locker beside the cage that held the boiler. My new friends lured the boy into the locker, then shut the door and held him in. Then they told me to run away as fast as I could so I could escape the clingy little boy.

I ran outside and jumped on my bike, pedalling as if my life depended on it. I had a good head start on the boy, but soon he was right behind me. I think he was yelling about how he was in love with me and that we could be together forever, or some such nonsense.

Eventually I came to a railroad crossing with a train speeding by. I rode alongside the train until I saw an empty boxcar, jumped onto its side, and crawled to safety. I had no idea where the train was going, but I knew it would be far away from the freaky little boy.

That's when I woke up. My heart was pounding hard in my chest, as if I had really been running for dear life. I was so wired that I stayed up for a while so I could relax. However, I had more strange dreams once I went back to sleep. They all involved me being murdered in different ways. First I was shot, then stabbed, then drowned, etc. Each dream ended with me realizing that I was dying, which was always the scariest part. I felt like I was sinking into an abyss and I knew that I would be no more.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep very well last night.

It's very gray today. That seems to be a characteristic of northeast Ohio. The winters contain many days where the slate-colored sky casts its dull shadow on everything. Nothing is too bright or dark, things just are. If apathy could be materialized, I think it would look like an Ohio winter.

Maybe that's just the sleep deprivation talking.

Well, at least I have something to look forward to tonight. "The Royal Tennanbaums" has come to our little city. Our movie theater is usually regulated to mainstream fare; so I was ecstatic when I found out I wouldn't have to go all the way to Cleveland to see it. Darren and I are going to see it tonight. I hope it's as funny as it looks because I could use a good laugh.