I’ve long maintained that my one superpower was my ability to fall asleep & stay asleep so easily. I’ve never suffered from insomnia, I don’t brood or have anxious energy at night, and any time I’m feeling tired I can sleep: on a bus, on a plane, on the couch, or in my bed.
I realize that this is a huge advantage for me. It’s a gift and a privilege and more than a humblebrag, it’s totally legitimately braggy.
But it’s still not flight or invisibility or superhuman strength. It is, in fact, a pretty pedestrian superpower like something out of Mystery Men.
The great weakness of this superpower is that I rarely, if ever, remember my dreams. I don’t even recall the experience of dreaming, actually. I just seem to exist either sleeping or waking, never in between.
On the rare occasion that I do experience dreams they are almost always nightmares and last night was no exception.
I had the sense of being asked to report to a faceless manager’s office. Presumably this is my current employer or maybe my former employer (from whom I was laid off earlier this year). I take a seat and they begin talking, at which point I realize the familiar pattern of uncomfortable conversation. I’m being reprimanded for something and, suddenly, my conscious mind intercedes. A huge, booming voice like a god or a Morgan Freeman voiceover commands that this isn’t actually happening at all and everything should stop.
And so it did. All of it.
The dream ended and I don’t recall thinking anything else until the moment I woke up this morning.This development seems like an infinitely better superpower: willful banishment of unwelcome dreams. I bet tons of people would like to be able to simply opt out of their brain ruining an otherwise good night’s sleep.
Now I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to replicate this event. For one I don’t dream enough for it to show its potential. For another, even when I do dream, I usually only get colors and shapes, like an impressionist painting and not something as bright or as clear like an architectural schematic or like last night’s cinematic experience.
My anxiety about work is still there, hence the dream. The superpower of sleep still protects me for 8 hours a night from the intrusion of daily drudgery. And now I have a way, it seems, to ward off intrusions from the day realm into the night realm.
I just thought I’d share. Sleep tight.
