August 29, 2007
When I talk about depression and my dreams.
There is something to be said for depression.
Left untreated it can be as debilitating as any physical ailment. The physical symptoms are painful to the body, mind, and spirit, and can strike without warning.
In the darkest days of my depression I remember sleeping for 17 to 18 hours without waking up. My dreams were my safe place, and I dared not venture farther than the comfort of those hazy mental meanderings. In the safety of sleep I could dream my life into whatever shape suited me at that moment. I didn't have to face the reality of my life, and I could escape into a world that I built in the synapses of my brain.
I hid away from the world until necessity forced me to face it, and even then I told myself a thousand little lies so that I did not have to deal with what I did not want to deal with. Only when I stood at the bottom of the garage stairs imagining running a garden hose from the exhaust of His truck into the house did I realize that I had slipped so far into depression that I was a danger to myself and those around me.
A visit to the doctor, admitting the truth, and accepting that small slip of paper with her signature on it changed me. The little pill that I take every night helps my body create whatever vital essence it does not naturally create, or perhaps it supresses some nasty unseen demon that my body just cannot fight alone. Whatever that tiny little pill does, it's magic.
One of the side effects of that pill, however, are fantastic and amazing dreams. Dreams so real that I often find myself remembering them later and having difficulty deciphering whether the thought is an actual memory, or a product of one of my dreams.
In my dreams I've gotten married, had a baby, become a truck driver, moved next door to an Olympic Gold Medalist (who became my new best friend), become the mayor of my town, and not to mention I've had conversations with countless people that are either dead, famous, or non-existant. I dream about my children, about my family, about old friends and old boyfriends, about past jobs and previous co-workers, and about mundane little things that have actually happened to me, but had long since slipped my memory.
Sometimes the dreams are heartbreaking, sometimes terrifying, occasionally hilarious, and often so strange that I wonder what part of my psyche created the thought. I have no control over what I dream. I've tried to lead myself into dreams by thinking about something very intensely prior to falling asleep, only to have my mind steer the dreams off into another direction completely.
Every now and again after a particularly horrendous dream (or should I call it a nightmare?) I will swear that I'm never going to take those pills again. But two or three days without them and I'm an emotional wreck, scared to look a stranger in the eyes, and feeling as if the earth might open up at any moment and swallow me whole, and sometimes hoping that it will. So, back on the little pill I go, and with it comes the stability that keeps me happy, and the dreams that define my nights.
Sometimes, I suppose, it's better to just take a little salt with your sugar.
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jktty at 3:40 p.m.