Virus diary #6

 Day 6

The night was full of nightmares, about being stuck somewhere, hiding, or not being able or allowed to speak. I didn't sleep well at all and woke up with a headache. Coffee tastes hot and bitter, but it works.

I had ordered groceries to be delivered from the local supermarket today. My request was spamfiltered, but when they did find my order, the service was excellent. 

Little one is completely OK now. SO and I are still having low fevers, but his has gone considerably down. He doesn't seem to be as affected by the sensory "wrongness" anymore, but he is irritable and quick to make angry and upset. He coughs all the time and has a headache.

It could be that men and women handle illness differently, or that the two of us simply have different instinct around illness. When I don't feel well, I withdraw and typically become oversensitive to noises and other stimuli. This has also happened with COVID, even more than with normal colds and flus. He, on the other hand, becomes very vocal. There is a constant stream of noises that indicate pain or discomfort. The noises make me want to escape up through the ceiling. It takes more and more mental energy to keep a straight, compassionate face on. 

I don't like the idea that loss of smell can be permanent. I don't want to never again be able to smell and taste food, grass, rain, the flowers at work. Most of all I don't want to lose the smell of my loved ones. I was one of those mothers who sniffs my child's hair every day. Now even he doesn't have a smell. It is heartbreaking, and I'm not allowed to talk about it at home as it makes my SO feel bad. He believes he was the one who infected me. I don't think so. I think we both got infected at the same time.

I tried taking a nap in the afternoon, and got a dream about pulling up mutant, half-human fish. This is a classic nightmare that I often get from feeling sick!

The body knows

Today, it is time for my annual review meeting at work. It is something we all have to go through, and I don't expect anything shocking or bad to come up. All my coworkers have come out of the manager's office with relieved expressions. I don't fear it. I keep reminding myself that there is nothing to fear here.

When I woke up today, my left hand had broken out in a rash. This thing, atopic eczema,bothered me in my early childhood. I had to see a dermatologist for it when I was 3 years old. It has mostly disappeared since then, but for the last couple of years, it has occasionally popped out in stressful situations.

No matter how much I try to convince myself that the meeting is no danger, my body seems to have a different opinion. The rash says what I sometimes don't want to say out loud.

This reminds me of a story my grandmother told me. She had just started a new job, and she was about to move into her new room in the town where she got the job. The night before her first day, she had a dream about rash covering her entire body. It was disturbing to her. When she woke up, she found her body covered with hives. My theory was that the itch must have leaked into her dream. She thought the stressful dream was the cause of the rash. With what I know now, I wonder if the stress was the cause of both,

She would also frequently experience sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations in that room. That is a story for a different post.

A late night walk

I was just out for a late night walk. This September has been unusually warm, and I need the exercise. Walking, for me, is almost a form of meditation. While my body moves with its own automatic rhythm, my thoughts flow freely.  I lose track of time.

Something made me look up at the sky for a split second. I saw stars, and looked at the road again, but something felt wrong. Fundamentally wrong. My subconscious was feeding me a sense of dread, as if I had seen something impossible happen. This confused me; I had just seen stars?

I stopped and peeked at the starry sky again. Then I saw it. One of the "stars" was in fact a high flying plane, slowly moving across the sky, too slow to be noticeable but too fast to be anything else than a plane. Somehow, my subconscious had registered this subtle movement and interpreted it as wrong, because stars don't move.

It is amazing how the subconscious can filter the enormous amounts of sensory information we take in every day, and only pass on the relevant part to the conscious mind. It makes me wonder how much we miss because it isn't weird or dangerous enough to be noticed.

How I got my first lucid dream

I am a natural lucid dreamer. The ability to be conscious in a dream runs in my family. I don't know if this is genetic or cultural inheritance, it is probably a combination. The first time I experienced and remembered a lucid dream, I was maybe five years old. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact age and time, because of the way memory works in a small child. From the memory of which bed I slept in, I was definitely older than three and younger than six.

It was early morning, and I had just had a pleasant dream. In the dream, I was walking in a beautiful park. It felt free and safe, and the only person in the park apart from me was an old man. Both of my grandfathers died before I was born, but this dream character felt as safe and magical at the same time as I imagine a grandfather does. He told me that it was easy to come back to this place. I just needed to fall asleep again after waking up, and I'd be back. Shortly after that, I woke up.

It was still dark, and quiet, so it took me a short time to fall asleep again. To my delight, I was back in the park! This time, I knew it was a dream. I can't remember if the "grandfather" was still there, but I spent several minutes exploring the dream park. It felt like I had just made a great discovery.

Today I know that this is called a lucid dream, and the technique that gave me the lucid dream is known as dream re-entry or DEILD. LD4all has several topics on it, this is a FAQ. It has continued to be one of the most reliable ways for me to get lucid through the years.

About this blog and me

Hi, I'm Siiw, and this is my personal blog.

The reason why my Blogger profile is called "Tante Rose" is that my first blog, Plantehjelp, is in Norwegian. I wanted a profile name that would fit the theme of the blog. Plantehjelp is mostly an instructional site for growing plants. This is a personal blog, where I'll simply write about things that I find interesting. This is also a convenient place for me to post photos, so my English speaking friends can see them.

Some websites may be promoted here. That doesn't mean that they sponsor me, or that I am affiliated with them, just that I like the sites. I can be quite passionate about some, such as LD4all.

The title "Inner Worlds" reflects one of my interests: lucid dreaming. Many lucid dreamers have regularly recurring dream places, some have elaborate worlds! I'll post about that, but not only that.

I apologise in advance for my English. My first language is Norwegian. If there are any errors in the blog, and there certainly are, I appreciate feedback on them so they can be corrected. The posts are written as they are, directly into the Blogger editor, so the language is far from perfect. This blog is after all a training project, for me to practice writing English.