Where the Wild Things Are
when he came to the place where the wild things are
they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws
JJ has the most fucked up sleep schedule ever. He goes to bed about 11:00AM and wakes up at 12:00 at night. He’s had this sleep schedule for several years, even though he’s always tried to change it. But for some reason or another, it always ends up with him sleeping during the day and staying up all night. I don’t know if this is the cause of his strange dreams and behaviour when he’s sleeping, but I’m sure it exacerbates it. I’m not completely sure because he’s always showed strange behaviour when it comes to sleeping. The way it works out is interesting, and while the whole dream-deciphering thing can be really exhausting and ridiculous, I think the way JJ and I sleep speaks a lot about us and who we are by what’s similar and what’s different about it.
About the only thing that’s similar about the way we sleep is that we sleep deep and both have nightmares almost every night. If not nightmares, bad dreams. Sometimes dreams that aren’t necessarily bad but so unusual that you don’t enjoy waking up and logically reacting to it. And very rarely, some good dreams, or none at all. What’s different about it is the way we react to it.
When I sleep and dream, I’m always hot and sweaty and never use covers. I always have a fan or air conditioner on. My biggest reaction when I’m nervous, scared, or anxious is that my body heats up. It’s easy to determine when I’m upset because I’m extremely flushed. Then I silently have a little panic attack, freak out a little, but I’m able to keep my emotions to myself.
But JJ…whew. He’s a completely different story. I was prompted to write this entry because I’ve been having a little Buffy season 2 marathon and JJ had fallen asleep on the couch after he turned his Halo 3 off, and he woke up around 3:00PM rather violently. I was watching Buffy quietly, there was a slow, mellow, quiet dance scene on, nothing frightful or loud. Then, in a split second, his eyes snapped open, he grabbed the toilet paper on the table and threw it at me: “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!!! JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT?! THAT’S NOT EVEN MINE!”
He went on for a while until I calmed him down. I saw reality register in his eyes, his shoulders slumped, and never one to aplogize, he walked sluggishly to his room. That, unfortunately, was one of many instances in which he’s freaked out. He says he has those little freakouts about once a week. I’m guessing it’s been bad this week, because yesterday I heard him scream and punch his wall and then an “OW! SHIT! FUCK! OWWWW!!!! GAHHH!”
JJ’s been a sleepwalker since he was a kid, too. Mom always tells JJ about a funny time he slept-walk when he lived in New York – he had walked into Mom and Jack’s room screaming “They’ve surrounded the house! We can’t get out! We need to send the logs down the river!” Yeesh. A couple days ago, Ashley had poked JJ to ask him to get off her stocking, and he grabbed her wrist, sat straight up, and pushed her on the ground. He apologized profusely for that one, but Ashley, thank Bob, thought it was funny. That man is always so on edge.
I think it shows how different our natures are. JJ by nature is confrontational, where I’m more passive. When JJ is upset, scared, pissed, or in pain, he’ll crucify someone, something, and fuck with something right back. He takes offense very easily, even if the cause of his discomfort or pain is in his head. He’ll fuck up that bedroom wall, dammit! I, on the other hand, am passive and I sit down and take the pain and deal with my discomfort or anger by myself and as quietly as I can. I’m SO NOT confrontational unless I’m pushed to the very edge, because I really hate drawing attention to myself. I think it’s interesting how I can draw parallels between our personalities and the way we react to dreams.
He also twists and turns a lot. I can hear his bed shaking over the TV. Me? I growl. I really, really don’t understand that. But mom says I’m a rather quite sleeper, other than the fact that I growl. It’s strange and embarrassing and a part of the reason I hate sleeping at people’s houses.
Maybe it’s stress or depression. Maybe we just have dark, overactive imaginations. But JJ and I…we got crazy shit goin’ on in our heads, man. We, brother and sister, can both stare into their yellow eyes without blinking once. But only JJ can be the king of all the wild things.
Leave a Reply