Awakened

I woke up much earlier on my birthday than I had intended. As I have often stipulated for anyone willing to listen, the date of my birth falls on the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. To be more precise, it occurs on the summer solstice, meaning that there are more hours of sunlight on this occasion than any other. It used to be important for me to rise as early as I could in order to take advantage of all that light. Now I find that finding a reason to stay tucked in my bed is the best gift I can give myself other than good dental hygiene. 

Last week I was able to get a little more rest because I was successful in my stubborn practice of ignoring my cat's insistence that he be fed as the sun begins to rise. His "polite" prodding with that one claw was not what brought me to consciousness. 

Instead, I was fleeing a dream. I wanted to be awake because I didn't want to be in the place where my amygdala was sending me: the lobby of an Arby's. All the lights had gone out. It was understood that these were the final moments before the nuclear cataclysm that had been set in motion hours before. I was attempting to make sense of this with the room full of strangers who found themselves in the same predicament. 

There wasn't a lot of panic, just a lot of consolation and various forms of acceptance of the situation. I understood the gravity of the situation when my good friend and mentor, Waldo showed up. The lucid portion of my brain was able to remind me that Waldo had passed on and this was a ghost. His appearance at this time and place was for emphasis. We would all be dead in a matter of seconds. Make peace with your life now. 

Instead of accepting this, I broke free from my REM state and came back to the relative comfort of my bedroom. The cat was on my chest, preparing to poke at me. I realized that I had escaped, but I felt burdened by a dream that I had thought I had given up after the Cold War. Recent events had stirred my Animus and left me to ponder my existence in an unstable world. 

I am not ready to have my life taken away because some former game show host wanted to pretend to be a tough guy. The answer to the question, "How does he sleep at night?" is painfully obvious by the late-night social media ramblings he makes on a regular basis. Maybe if he closed his eyes and turned off his phone he would be the one with the bad dreams. 

Instead of me.