I had a dream

Just today. In the midst of 14th February, Valentine's Day, the day a saint died. The day everybody twisted the story around into money-making schemes and ugly red roses and sickeningly sweet chocolate and sappy wine and dinner sets and fluffy teddy bears and overdone candles and disgustingly romantic gestures and diamonds.

It was a horrid dream, beautiful and sweet, at the same time it repulses me so much, but all I knew was that I woke up crying uncontrollably, until my eyes were swollen for hours and I was finishing packets of tissue for my nose. "I'm sorry," you said, in my dream, and you kissed my nape, arms around me, it felt so real, though every moment of our relationship was slowly reduced to the head of a pin. But the emotions that knotted in my chest, it brought back every filament of what I felt back then, the warmth, the happiness, the buzz of endorphins, the serotonin levels that went crazy, the perpetual smile I had, it drove me to a maddening sadness when the dream dissipated and I returned to reality, conscious and frightened by my own subconscious.

My mind had been rejecting the idea of him so violently that it was almost like purging myself of him, all these binge shopping and carbicides, intoxicating myself, overdosing on my prescription meds so the effects are stronger and pharmaceutically I could destroy and obliterate him from my head, from my memories. I hoped so much for a car crash or a sudden amnesia so I could forget all of him and all of everything, of the pain that claimed me.

I'm filled with conflicting thoughts and feelings: of whether I was romantically attracted to him or just lusted after him, where did the hurt stem from, was it because it was a loss of friendship, was it because I fell for him, was it because I fell for the chase, was it because I got what I wanted, I wanted to solve this puzzle but I wanted to avoid it. I didn't want to know the real answer, because I was afraid to know that in fact I might have really loved him in that short time, or that I thrived with him on lust, which would in turn both make me feel ashamed and disgusted by my own actions.

I couldn't distinguish the different levels of anguish any more. The agony that sweeps over me when I'm off my meds, the scare that I'm madly dependent on them, I am eagerly anticipating Wednesday where I'm fed more pills to stave off this pain. This consistency and stability was all I needed to know and understand of pain, because the lines have blurred so much, I don't even know why I hurt and where am I hurting. This is one of the gifts of depression, where hurt and agony have no addresses but homes in your soul and heart and mind.

Maybe I was just flirting with madness. Some days I feel the edges of my sanity fray, some days I feel like a complete nutcase, somedays I feel so normal that it's abnormal. I don't understand where I stand any more. It's confusing, not to know if you're losing your mind or if you are not. I wish I knew if I was losing my mind. Then maybe I'll be more at peace and there'll be silence in my head. I don't even know if I am making sense writing this essay of thoughts, rolled freshly off my head just the way I think it, unstructured and non sugar coated.

I dreamt of my father too. I dreamt he had another family, and he had 6 children, and he splurged on them luxuriously, with generous dinner treats at TGIF, plush soft toys from departmental stores, and when my brother and I ran into him he bought us sundaes with hot chocolate fudge and left us there, telling us he only had $70 left and he couldn't do anything else more for us after leaving us out there in the cold for nearly a decade. I've always hated my father for being a coward, for leaving us, for putting the burden of raising two children on my mother, for being a poor businessman, for being a cheater, for being a wifebeater, for being everything that reminded me of my last date. A leaver. A coward. A useless, good for nothing person who achieved nothing in life.

There was so much bitterness and hatred manifesting in me when I woke up this morning and when my mother called, I poured everything out to her. I could hear her heart cracking through her patient advice, my voice was dripping with so much hurt and sadness I knew it was killing her that she couldn't be here with me physically, but her words comfort me. I cried for another two hours and downed my pills, headed for a light dinner and met my friends, who effectively lifted me out of my darkness with jokes and conversation and tea and ice blended chocolate.

I have so much blessings, and I am grateful that I am never alone in this. I used to think I was alone in this darkness, until I see those people walking in with candles in their hands, ready to chase the blackness away with light. They hand me the candles, and they sit with me. I will cry again, touched, because they didn't leave. Not for the last 2 years, not for the last 2 months. They're still here, with me, waiting for me to be okay. Your friends and families are precious, please treasure them.