Night Terrors.

These things suck terribly.
I've been living free from them for a long time, but there was a time in my life where I was having them several times per week. Science has always seemed unsure of what causes them. For me I know exactly what causes them. Disrupted sleep cycles...waking up and going to bed at random times. I've been awake from this one for about 5 minutes now, and I'm scared to go back to sleep.
I started getting them when I was younger and I had insomnia. I'd force myself to sleep, and invariably wind up having one of these conscious nightmares.
I eventually learned how to recognize that a dream was going to turn into one, and I'd wake myself up before I was caught in the feeling of being paralyzed and dying in my sleep.
I think it was on my first sales job that I realized just how damaging they had been. The regular hours of the sales job meant no more nightmares.
I also noticed I wasn't going crazy as regularly. That was about 9 years ago.
This week I worked 4 day shifts, and 1 night shift. 1 day later I'm waking up screaming in the middle of the night with my wife gently tapping on my back and telling me I'm okay like she used to do (she still remembers the old routine...get to a safe distance and poke me every few seconds, then jump back because I might come out of it swinging)
Here was tonight's freaky bullshit nightmare (which I'm going to write about, because I'm terrified to try sleeping again.)
It started with me trying to get somewhere, not sure where, and I was moving through an alleyway, in an old Saskatoon neighbourhood of old houses.
Somebody was moving out of one of the houses, and their stuff was blocking the alley. Their garage door was open, so I went in through there, and found myself in the stranger's house. I moved through a few houses this way, sometimes just leaving a room before a stranger entered. Soon the houses morphed into one big house, and my family was living in it, and had been living in it for a long time. It was a big old monstrosity, and I was walking around the top floor one day I got the creepiest feeling that other people had been there, and I could feel their presence. I'm getting goosebumps right now at just what a strange and creepy feeling this is. I then noticed that we had never unpacked most of our things from the day that we had moved in.
I was in a room that contained our exercise equipment and a bunch of boxes when I heard someone in the hallway, and in fun I ran out of the room to scare them. The person was a stranger, and I laughed after having startled them...there was nothing unusual about this stranger being in my house apparently. He was kind of angry and he stormed off, and I was laughing away to myself, when suddenly the compulsion to run screaming back into the room I'd just left grabbed hold of me. I ran in screaming, and stood in the room screaming, unable to stop, and my screams began to change. I couldn't move, but I could feel my legs starting to burn. It became clear to me that a little girl had burned to death in the house, and her spirit was still there and had possessed me. I was burning to death as well, and screaming for help, and flames were starting to blaze all over the room. I still couldn't move, and I was screaming a more high pitched scream. At about this point I realized I was in a night terror, but I couldn't get out of it, and now I was screaming so that Janet would be able to hear me and shake me awake. I was screaming so much that I could feel my back rippling (it made sense in the dream), and then that rippling turned to Janet nudging me and then I could hear her saying "you're okay, you're okay."
I fucking hate those things.

doo bee doobeedee dooo dooo...CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC!

5:00 and I'm off work and I'm off work for 24 hours which is a rare and precious thing these days brethren and sistren.
I'm out the door and into my car before the door has closed behind me and I hit the ignition and the gas and the gear shift and the clutch all at the same time and I am jumping forward and ready to zoom like a MUTHA when I find myself locked into the parking lot by a seemingly endless flow of traffic.

Here's the deal.
Generally I head out the parking lot, on to the street, make a quick left and I'm on the freeway. But 5 p.m. is different because the traffic crawls, and I'm all adrenalized and my wound uppedness is all wanting to unwind and fast and I just can't do that sitting motionless in a motionless car.
So to hell with the left! I'm going straight across the road. I've got moves baby. I can run through the briars and run through the brambles and run through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go. There was but one obstacle in front of me, a freaking imported Daihatsu Hijet of all things. He was making the left into the endless clogged pipe of Circle Drive. My hands drumming on the wheel, cursing and swearing, rolling the window up and rolling the window down I waited for him to make the turn and I hauled out wide around him and I went straight across. I saw him glare at me for a quick half second as I passed, and the driver of that little Daihatsu was a strange looking guy. He was balding, deeply tanned, like golf pro big money tanned, with hair so white the contrast almost had it glowing. Big bushy white eyebrows and an equally white fu manchu mustache to top it off completed his look.
I gave a smile in response to his glare then boom! down Ave. C, and a sharp and screeching left on to 38th Street where there isn't a single vehicle waiting at the light to cross Idylwyld. (Only madmen and lunatics cross Idylwyld at Rush Hour!)

Bam! The light goes green and I hit drive and move out of a cloud of dust express bound for glory all the way over to Quebec Ave. This is another easy left, the common misconception being that if the main vessels are closed, these arteries will be even more jammed. They're deserted, wide open like my throttle is when I fishtail out and head North bound for Circle, having bypassed the majority of commuters. Or so I thought.
There was a back up to make the right on to Circle, five or six cars, too patiently awaiting too large a gap that will never come. Screw these guys too I think and I go up over a curb (4 to da W to da D awww yeeaaa) and through 3 parking lots to beat them all onto Circle and half block ahead.

I'm jammed in good and crossing the bridge. Coming up on to the 14th st overpass I can see the traffic is at a standstill and I see it before most people do because I drive the road 2 blocks ahead not the one right in front of me. I swing over into the exit lane, hit 14th along with maybe half a dozen other drivers perceptive and impatient enough to have made an alternate choice, and then it's a wild zig zag of streets and alleyways I know like the back of my hand, bypassing everybody on the way to Preston at 8th where the traffic always thins out.
Now listen people, here's the thing. I did not stop on my commute home. For me there was traffic, but I was constantly in motion. At no point was I stopped dead for an extended period. I was always moving, always at speed.
So when I pulled on to Preston and pulled up right behind a little freakin' white Daihatsu Hijet you might have thought me perturbed. You might have thought I felt defeated to see that with all my manoueverings and machinations I was still one car length behind. I wasn't. I was ecstatic!
Here's why.
It's not about getting a car length ahead. It's not about getting home sooner. It's about not stopping. It's about not sitting still and always moving.
25 minutes later we may have found ourselves at the same point in time space again, the Daihatsu and I. But I knew that he crawled all the way there. He travelled at an average speed of about 5 km/hr. I on the other hand was consistently moving at about 80k.
According to the theory of relativity, the old man in the Daihatsu aged more than I did in that 25 minutes, because for me, less time had passed. It might be an imperceptibly small chunk of time, but it was time gained nonetheless. And that my friends, is priceless.