Paranoid Android

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• March 28, 2016

“Ambition makes you look pretty ugly.”

Exhaustion does funny things to the brain.  It’s not that I haven’t been sleeping.  Been sleeping plenty, though none of it good.  For the better part of the month, I’ve been tossing and turning, waking up from familiar nightmares, and getting up more groggy than usual, looking out my window, convinced the apocalypse is happening right now.  If you’re searching for signs, you’ll almost always find them.  The world is up for interpretation.

Like a small child, I go to sleep clutching a soft blanket to my face.  It still smells like my childhood home, and I’m terrified when that smell goes away.  Most nights I stay up late writing or reading, which I view as productive, but it doubles as procrastination for much needed sleep.  I haven’t had trouble falling asleep in years, and now, I lay for an hour, wondering if I’ll ever fall asleep.  I do, of course, only to wake up in a couple hours.

Stress dreams include, but not limited to:

• Someone moving stuff around in my apartment and I can’t find things (OCD, much?)
• Being in high school and not having an assignment done or not knowing any answers to a test (I’m almost 27, this needs to stop)
• Going broke, and going back to the nursing home for work.  I dreamt I was back working in the nursing home, in the kitchen, and someone I worked with whom I haven’t spoken to in years was sobbing because some else who worked there had died on a drug and alcohol overdose.
• I dreamt I found a dead alien in a dryer.
• I dreamt I was kidnapped by a crazy lady, who fed me poisoned soup.
• And of course, standard reality-like stress dreams about my job, and stand-up, and relationships I had or never had.

And almost every morning, I sneeze blood.  What the fuck is happening to me?  Then, I go to work, tired.  And I avoid answering the phones, because my patience is fried and I’m afraid I’m going to tell one of these idiots to go fuck themselves, and lose my job.  Going on stage and telling jokes is the best part of my day.  I’ve realized I’m totally fucked.  Comedy and happiness have become linked for me, and I know that’s not healthy.  I’m mad at myself for even letting that happen.  Can I undo it?

Isolation has become my main form of comfort.  Friends, slowly turning into past acquaintances.  I miss missing people.

Pacing around my apartment, reading, or writing, or drinking, or all three, I’m consumed in the freedom of seclusion.  I think I’m too young to disconnect from the world.  To not relate to anyone.  To not even try.  I don’t think anyone says what they mean, or what they feel.  We’re all liars.  Which is paranoid.  I’m paranoid.  My dreams are flooded with paranoia.

Sleep paralysis has become the norm.  Except now, I can recognize it for what it is.  Save for the other night, when a floating shadowy head was whispering my name next to my bed.  That scared the shit out of me.  I pulled a blanket over my head, and tried to go back to sleep, and not think about it.  I then slipped into dream I was hooking up with a comic in a car which was driving itself (not saying who).

Rejection dreams are happening every other night, where basically, I’m trying to fuck a dude, and he tells me he’s not interested.  I have dreams every thing on my computer has been erased, and I cry hysterically that the screenplays, the book, everything I’ve worked so hard on is gone.  I’ve dreams about the ocean too, but when I try to surf, I only get caught in the riptide.

I dreamt the moon exploded, and people literally went crazy.  People just started attacking one another, and I smashed someone’s face with a burning hot frying pan, and I felt horrible about it because I destroyed her face.  I mean, it was wrecked.  I had a dream I had an important stand-up audition, but for some reason, I wasn’t wearing shoes, and an agent or producer was yelling at me for being at idiot.  Sometimes, when I go to bed hungry, I just dream about eating.  Those are pretty good dreams.

So I wake up in the middle of night, and go pee.  Then, I crawl back into bed and count how many hours I have left to sleep.  Despite the paranoid dreams, I still prefer sleeping than staying up for any length of time.  I try to focus on one thing.  One thing.  Simple.  The emerald mountains in Hawaii.  My nephew’s hair.  An approving smile.  A pink sky.  That’s it.  And sleep comes easier the second time.  Until it’s interrupted by that wretched alarm clock.