Potato Chips are for breakfast today, at 10:00am. They are kettle cooked, and barbeque flavor. Not sure if they make a bacon version, but if they did, I would eat that for breakfast instead.

My wife left town this morning on a week long adventure with a fellow teacher friend and her Dad. They are heading to the east coast, all the way to D.C. I was glad to hug her at 6:00 this morning, but sad she is leaving for so long. I know she will have fun, and it will go by quickly for both of us, but since she’s not here to share a scramble of eggs and squash and sprinkled cheese, I’ll just have chips instead.

Anyway, after being up early and checking on the garden, I decided to come back in the house for little more shut-eye. I was playing with a new military version sleeping bag, that I got from Steve at Take It Outside. Instead of this 3-piece sleeping system being laid in the dust or mud or sand of some war-torn country, I rolled it out on my couch.

Quickly I was deep, deep asleep.

I remember some of the dreaming, but mostly the very end. I could hear something strange in my home. It was coming from the kitchen area, maybe it was a person. I was trying to wake up and get off the couch. I knew I had been sleeping there. My body was completely heavy and loose. I could feel a slight electrical tickle all over, but I couldn’t move my muscles. My arms were limp, my legs were too. My neck was just a connector piece, nothing that could lift my head. Even my eyelids refused to open…

Crap! I think someone is in here. I think someone has done something to me. I can’t move. I can’t do anything. Maybe I’m dead! Ahhh! I tried to tell myself to wake up, It just wasn’t happening. I was ‘seeing’ only the twinkling blackness where you know there is light out there, but it’s blocked. I could feel the whooshing of the ceiling fan. I knew it was a morning sun in the room. I just couldn’t move.

One more time, AAAAHHHH! Extra effort, everything I had, is all it took, to pop open my eyes, and look around the room. It was almost an exhausting experience just to wake myself up from this super super deep sleep. Wow. Looking around, reorienting myself, there was no one in the room. Everything is fine. I am okay. I was just dreaming. I’d better get up and start my blog, and grab something to eat… hmm… those BBQ chips look good 🙂

Several times in the last few weeks. I have had awake experiences that mirror this dream. I have found myself over and over lately, stuck in a moment, feeling as if someone has done something to me. Feeling as if I cannot move, I am limp and lifeless, the seconds are eternities and my anxiety level pumps all the way to the top. In a flash I have gone from normal to freak-out-angry-crazy mode. Seriously y’all… it ain’t pretty!

Just like in the dream, I panic. I feel that everything I am trying is failing. I feel somehow that I am dying into the stillness and stuckness of the instant. I feel the light fading away and darkness rolling in. It is a spastic explosion, when trying to break free from it. This has happened at work, (both works) and at home. I lose my ever-lovin’ mind sometimes…

Yet, it is a dream. Yet, the freedom of waking up shows me the truth. Yet, the scary-ness of the crunched-down vise-grip moment, wasn’t caused by someone on the outside, doing something to me. It was caused by the thought that they did. The thought, that I believed, super strongly, that they did something to me. I was deep, deep asleep at that moment, even as I walked and talked in the consciousness of the real world, not dreamin’.

See, I am asleep, when I am stuck, believing those kinda thoughts. I am asleep and not seeing reality, when I am feeling that someone did this to me. I am lost and un’conscious’ blaming someone else for the position I am in. I am lucky to wake up, after these blowups. I am lucky to snap back, and notice that overall, everything is okay. I am just fine, the other person is just fine, but that panic moment was ugly all around. It was exhausting and crippling and damaging too. It was all a mistake, and afterward I can see that.

Afterward, I can see that no one did anything to me. I did it to myself. I chose to believe a untrue thought. I chose to focus on one angle of the story. I chose to only see one brief and scary snapshot throughout the movie of life. Like pausing a scene on tv. The actor’s face is weird and contorted, they look mad, or violent, and when you un-pause, it is all laughter.

Because Lindsay left this morning for a week, and I have no one to share a good breakfast with, I am eating barbecue potato chips… boo, hoo, pooooor me… WRONG!

I am eating barbecue kettle cooked chips this morning, because I want to. Because I chose to. That is all. They are delicious 🙂 And yes, I do, already, choose to miss my wife 🙂

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols