Where is My Mind?

Where is my mind? Where is my mind? That Pixies song plays at the end of Fight Club as buildings explode and collapse. It's a perfect metaphor in the film and it's a perfect metaphor in my own reality right now. This is the second night in a row I've risen at three o'clock in the antemeridian and haven't been able to get back to sleep. Last night, I woke because my son cried briefly. I couldn't go back to sleep because I began thinking about all the bullying I endured as a kid. With the recent rash of suicides of gay teens, the subject has been front and center and I've also brought it up in counseling a couple of times so it's been on my mind. I was basically lying there cataloging names and events, rehearsing the moments, remembering the results. When I was done, I started over again. It felt like my mind was perseverating on the topic. I got up and worked on the track I released yesterday. Anything I can do to distract my mind from that topic usually helps my anxiety. I still can't go back to sleep but at least I'm not lying there upset and anxious.

Tonight it was a dream. I was in a basement, standing near the bottom of a staircase. I was with someone but I don't remember who it was. We were both wearing tuxedos. The basement was leaking water and it was raining hard outside. The water rose quickly. It was soon up to my chest and the person I was with was now almost disembodied, like they were floating. They told me it was time to get out of the basement. I quickly climbed out of the rising water and closed the door to the basement stairs. I was now in a kitchen watching rain splatter on the window. I didn't recognize the location, but there was an island in the kitchen with a marble countertop. As rain spattered the glass panes of the windows covering the wall behind me, an adult Paul Arnold, a childhood friend also wearing a tuxedo, toppled from his spot where his was standing on part of the counter. At that moment, water began violently spouting under the crack in the door from the basement. When I woke this time, my mind was racing. I was anxious and my mind flew through topic after topic, all of which were negative. I can't remember any of them specifically. I was worrying about all of them. I tried to stop thinking and go back to sleep but after forty minutes I couldn't stand it anymore and got up again.

I think I need to get more exercise and chew some Valerian root. (I did go for a run.)