I'm probably going back to bed (if I can shake the images from my dream) but I thought I'd post something quickly to clear my head.

When I'm under stress my dreams are rather intense. I guess this can be filed under 'obvious' but it's almost like my subconscious' way of trying to purge all the negative emotions and situations I'm experiencing. It's almost never literal, though. That's what I love about dreams. Instead of stating the obvious like, 'You're in a constant state of panic because of what is going on with your daughter and feel like nothing is in your control' what happens is I have a dream that can recreate that feeling in an exaggerated way.

The dream I had that I just woke from was one such dream. It used my fear of blood and saliva communicated diseases to illustrate the feeling of panic and feeling trapped in a situation you hate. The basic storyline was that I went into a hospital (I guess that part was literal) and it was a wing for needle addicts (a la heroin, etc). I hate needles (rather I should say, I hate diseased needles--the thought of them makes me sick.) That's part of why I always wear shoes, I am terrified of coming across one of these at a park or at the beach, etc, abandoned by some diseased drug user.

So, as I am walking through this wing of the hospital with a nurse, a guy comes up to me and stabs me with a needle (intentionally). It barely goes into my skin, since I dodged his attack, but it managed to prick me enough to infect me. At this point in the dream I am not sure if I am infected but I fear that I am. I go back to a nurse's station and already there are boils/lesions showing up on my leg. The medical jargon in this dream made absolutely no sense at all. You can tell I never watch medical shows. Something about my leg being 80% infected already (which means I was very ill) by this autoimmune disease/virus (those are the ones I'm the most afraid of--the viruses that live in your body and can't be cured...shudder).

Anyway...umm...so that is pretty much it. The dream ends with me crying and telling my family how I have this autoimmune virus that I got from this crazy drugged out guy who stabbed me while I was in the hospital. Fun, right? That's the kind of dreams I get when I finally try to have a good night's sleep. Of course I still slept like hell, but despite this, I am still glad that I have these dreams, as they clearly illustrate the level of stress I have and how important it is to cope with it. In my experience, as long as not taken too literally, dreams never lie. They give you important information about how you're doing.