I sleep through the night, almost every night. After the sometimes rigorous effort to get my mind to sleep, I stay that way, slipping in and out of REM cycles and in and out of dreams and eventually awake on the other side of the day. I don't always get all the sleep I want. I hardly ever get to bed when I want to and I almost always get up as early as I liked to. And the world in between, the world of the REM cycles and the substitute for insomnia, is my thinking place.

I have decided that every day my subconscious wrestles with my conscious. It tries to squelch the over-analyzing and the nit-picking and tries to find a peace. The subconscious desires control. We should use our conscious for simple tasks like working and eating and tying our shoes and relax about the rest. My theory evolves to say that stress then is this usurping of power from our subconscious.

My sleep though is not relaxed. I dream the most elaborate dreams. I am not a queen with lots of jewels--if only that's what I meant by elaborate. Instead, my dreams are woven versions of my life. You are the characters in my dreams. If I talked to you today you will most likely appear in my dream tonight. If I am worried about something or anticipating something, that event will play out in my dream. If I'm deeply engrossed in a book the characters will continue their fiction while I sleep.

I wonder, then, is that really my subconscious? They say that dreaming is your subconscious but its doing the same thing as my conscious, except while I sleep. The repose isn't restful for me. Rather, I have new ways of looking at things or realized fears or funny stories to tell my friends.

There are nights when I do not dream at all. They are few and far between but when I awake I feel quieted.