Dreams and Nightmares

I've been sleeping like crap lately, dreaming like crazy (although some of you are saying we always dream, only sometimes don't remember it...okay fine), crazy, crazy dreams, nightmares too, waking up crying and upset. It really is quite unpleasant. My subconscious is busy at work processing my life as it is at the moment. I had an absolutely awful one involving a research lab with monkeys and cats locked in cages together and for whatever crazy reason I was getting a tour of the lab and then the vivisector decided to illustrate their research and started carving into a cat with a giant kitchen knife right in front of me. Yeah, gruesome. I suppose that was my conscious (am I using the right word there? Or should I be using conscience? Not enough time to check out dictionary.com) processing my guilt for no longer protesting animal research and the fact that I have taken on the project of caring for a trio of feral cats living in my yard. Not to mention seeing a dead cat that morning in the road, body intact entirely but head absolutely exploded...run over by a car. And later on a walk with my dog, two dead birds.

Then, Sunday night I caught part of 60 Minutes and it was a story that will haunt me the rest of my life (that is what I get for watching tv some of you are saying). They did a story of a mentally ill 21 year old who was in jail for shoplifting and then pulling out a knife. In jail he had tried to commit suicide several times as well as flooded his cell by clogging the toilet. To keep him from further acting in ways they disapproved of the guards chained him to his bed. Chained him. His legs and feet and torso so that he was laying flat on the bed. Heavy, heavy looking chains, like what you would tow a car with. The "rules" say prisoners shouldn't be locked down more than 4 hours at a time. These guards had him locked most of the day for four days, one time for 17 hours at one time (the Feds had previously required cameras to be set up in the cells so all of this was on tape and they played it on the show). Within days they showed the guy falling down in his cell with his hands chained together and dying. He died of dehydration. This was truly the most upsetting thing I've seen in a long while and now that is messing with my sleep and dreams. I just can't get those images out of my mind. Doesn't help that I go see my friend Darren in jail on a weekly basis who is due to be transferred to a federal prison (which is way harsher than a little county jail) to finish out his sentence. Jails are horrible, horrible places that have become a place to house the mentally ill and those who just don't fit into society the way that some in power have decided they need to. They are awful places where horrible things happen (I hear stories every week that just shock me).

It's a wonder that any of us ever sleep at night much less not have nightmares that wake us crying on a daily basis.

Sorry for the downer entry, but frankly these thoughts have been heavy in my heart lately and I'm not thinking about much else.