sweet dreams are made of ?difficulties?

“I’d rather fail like a mortal than flail like a god on a lightning rod
History forgets the moderates” Andrew Bird ‘syphilis

I grew up ‘burning the candle at both ends’. I’d get up early for school but I’d choose to get hooked on a book past midnight. Sleep never seemed more important than a good story.

I needed to switch off. I needed to escape into a good plot. I needed my dreams to be full of the characters in fantasy books, rather than the worries my subconscious really had.

When I read Northern lights (Philip Pullman) and then watched the recent ‘His Dark Materials’ tv show, it would strike me how the subtle knife is a perfect metaphor for my struggles with sleep.

As the character Will uses the blade to open a new world he has to concentrate his brain on not focusing.

“This edge,” said Giacomo Paradisi, touching the steel with the handle of a spoon, “will cut through any material in the world. Look.”  
And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the spoon’s handle fell to the table, cut clean off.  
“The other edge,” the old man went on, “is more subtle still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether. Try it now. Do as I say — you are the bearer. You have to know. No one can teach you but me, and I have not much time left. Stand up and listen.”

Falling asleep, in my experience, is much like trying to slip into another world. A world where your subconscious takes over, your mind is resting. The anxiety cycles that I try and push past are no longer a problem. And I want to join that world at night so much.

The mental health struggles I’ve been through, have suggested to me a link between the unconscious mind and vulnerabilities.

That’s my experience

And trauma therapy has helped with it.

But those experiences, that caused PTSD symptoms, will never go away. I’m just learning to move past them.

Fantasy books, science fiction, help me have a break from this world. But I’m getting better at living in the world I’m in. And for that, I’m eternally grateful x

“We should never stop being curious, to always open any curiosity door we find”. (Dustin, Stranger things)