14 hours of work today, and my coworker wants to go in at the normal time tomorrow morning. I get why, and so I'll aim for it, but I'm not too happy about the idea. It's 1AM now, but I wanted to wind down a bit before I go to sleep.

In my last blog I mentioned having a hypnagogic episode. I don't know if I've mentioned this in my blog before, but I might as well explain myself now.

I've had an issue with that ever since I was little. The word "hypnagogic" classifies my hallucinations as those happening during early stages of sleep, but the doctor who did my sleep study (for which I didn't fall asleep and we failed to replicate the event) told me that what I was experiencing was caused by falling too quickly into REM sleep (skipping all the early stages of sleep), and then waking up immediately, which would leave me in limbo for a few minutes, fully aware and seeing both the real and imagined worlds at the same time. These hallucinations are invariably coupled with intense fear, and most of the time don't make any sense at all (often replacing things in the real world with geometric shapes, like my parents would be cylinders and my siblings would be cones or something like that).

When I was very young, I would hallucinate sometimes as often as once or twice a week (although once per month or less often was typical, as far as I remember). In elementary school I was examined, and the doctor told me that I needed to practice stress management, because my body wasn't releasing stress on its own in a healthy way. Ever since then I've made a lifestyle out of trying to manage stress. I was pretty young at that time, and I didn't really know what it meant to manage stress, so I took to introspection in order to learn what stress was, and eventually invented some of my own ways to meditate, some of which I still practice from time to time. Really, though, I didn't meet much success until 8th and 9th grade.

Around that time I encountered that person I mentioned in my previous blog (and I intend that this is the last consecutive blog wherein they will be mentioned). That person introduced me to blogging, and we used to be among the very few (possibly the only) readers of one another's blogs on Xanga. As it happens, keeping a journal or blog is one of the most well documented (lol) and well attested means of managing stress. Blogging was the first major step I took towards actual productive methods of stress management, and the exchange we shared was really a major turning point for me, and I started to make really quick progress in high school.

By 10th grade I brought myself down to almost one episode per 6 months, and I don't remember having any episodes at all during 12th grade. I hallucinated once during my freshman year of college, and then I don't think it happened again until I got married. Marriage is hard, and it's happened a couple of times since we married. But God is the laborer of my love, and He makes my feet firm so that I will not be shaken. I fully intend that my wife will be aware that I love her all the time. I do not want to be a man who doesn't call his wife enough, or a man who doesn't tell or show her that he loves her. Even when we're stressed, or arguing, or long distance, I want her to know that I love her.

"You know they're crazy when they stroke their chin like this."