A Hard Day's Night

I realized I was standing in the store I work at in the middle of the night. I'd obviously come to get something, but I couldn't remember what, nor could I remember how I'd gotten there. There were other customers around, considering the store is open 24/7, so no one was looking at me weird, but I felt weird. Intensely so.

Had I been asleep? It's scary realizing you've just woken up somewhere. I had to have gotten in my car and driven from home, and the biggest relief I had besides the fact that I'd obviously made it alive was that my daughter is with her other parent this weekend. I could have just left my daughter alone in the middle of the night. I could have caused a car accident, could have killed someone, could have died.

I puttered, reeling, around the store. Since I was there, maybe I'd buy something. Maybe I'd remember what I had come for. I was certainly in no condition to drive. I ran into a few people I've worked with and gave watery smiles, all the while trying to hold onto sanity.

At the checkout, I noticed the registers had all been changed during my day off. I hadn't heard anything about a remodel and didn't like it. It looked a lot more complicated than it needed to be. A couple managers showed up, offered me some snacks they'd had in the back for whatever employees wanted them, and I took one, all the while still trying to figure out what I was doing.

This is the kind of dream I regularly have. It's hard to separate from reality for the most part, and I'm left feeling off-kilter for the rest of the day. I'll be going to work soon and I'll see all these people and feel like I'm insane and if they just thought about it they'd know because they saw something bizarre and didn't recognize it.

My job has eaten my life. I dream about it, think about it, worry about it, and get one day off twice a week instead of an actual weekend. Some people like getting two breaks, but one day isn't enough for me to shake things off and relax because there's something fundamentally wrong with my brain. At least, that's the way it feels.

I haven't contemplated suicide this winter, which is good, but that's less because I like my life and more because I found a question to ask myself that scares me too much to want to find out: What if there's no heaven or hell and death just erases us from existence? The idea of disappearing entirely scares me more than eternal hellfire, and I'll take that.

I'll take it and my feelings of insanity to work, and I'll be quiet all day. I'll work, I'll jump every time someone walks up behind me, and every time I try to smile politely, people will give me a look that says I'm not fooling anyone.

Withdrawal

Ever have a dream so vivid that you have trouble separating it from reality when you wake up?

That's been the past week for me. I want to sleep, because awake I'm dizzy and otherwise miserable (I'll explain that later), but every time I fall asleep it's some epic journey through my subconscious that not only wakes me up instead of allowing me to solve the issue at hand, but leaves me exhausted and confused.

My ten hours in bed last night were interrupted several times (at least four or five). I will spare you the details, but at one point I was in a dystopian version of the already effed-up dream world I'd inhabited. All the houses had turned to colorless paper replicas of themselves, and I needed to save something on which my life hinged.

This afternoon, when I got tired of the dizziness and took a nap to escape, I got to attend a rave. Glowsticks and everything. I'd just begun wondering why the dance floor was so pathetically empty when I woke up yet again.

Let's backtrack: I take various medications because a doctor tells me to, and it's better than feeling suicidal. My prescriptions expired before my yearly appointment (if this sounds familiar, it is), and so I'm having withdrawal symptoms. Dizziness, nausea, "brain zaps" (that one's fun. Not.) and a long list of other unpleasantness are the center of my waking universe.

The pharmacy got me emergency refills on two of my medicines, which is why I'm able to sleep at all, but apparently that third one is pretty important. And apparently that's as much as I'm capable of writing without completely blanking out.

So one time, at the caterer I worked for, there weren't enough bow ties for all the employees, so the boss decided only the girls got to wear them, because the girls looked better in bow ties. He was right.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Ever had a nightmare so profound that you can't shake it off? I've had many, leading me to such rational acts as telling my father not to go to a certain store for a week, and freaking out whenever he wore a certain shirt. Last night's was one for the books. The kind where you wake sweating, feeling nauseous and fairly certain you've been crying, and for the rest of the day you're on edge, praying nothing happens and afraid to do anything, lest it turn out to be real after all.

Warning: Parental Fear Trigger ahead.

The realism didn't help any. I was sitting in this very house alone, my grandmother in physical rehab, during Thanksgiving break, and got a phone call that my daughter had died. She'd been in a horrible car accident and a piece of iron had gone through her eye. Of course, countless times during this nightmare I got visuals of exactly that, of my child screaming in terror, and I was shattered. My child, one of my best friends, my favorite pet, my life's work, something that will never happen again in my life, gone. Just gone.

I was stricken with grief. I didn't want to live anymore, didn't want to eat, and sometimes I was in shock, like I'd just blink and she'd walk through the door. In fact, part of me insisted it had to be a nightmare, and I'd look at the door, knowing she was about to come in, but she didn't. There was no closure, and I couldn't handle it. I couldn't see her again, it didn't feel real, and how was I supposed to go looking for a job when I my world had just died?

And I was still alone, but more alone than ever. My family was worried, but nobody did anything, as always. If you don't talk about it, it goes away, except for me it wasn't going away and it never would.

I was told I should move to the city and try to get a job, now there wouldn't be anything holding me back, and all I could think was I don't care if she was 'holding me back,' I don't feel free, I feel lost. I had the thought that I could finally move to California, that I'd never have to see my ex again, but if I expected to feel relief, I didn't. What if I did move? I'd be living with someone who has a child of her own, a daughter only a year younger than mine. Could I handle it? Would envy kill me? Self-pity? Would I get attached to someone else's child in a sad attempt to replace my own? Could I live with that? Would I ever be a functional human being again?

I didn't know, and I don't know. I woke sweating, nauseous, and spent, and I've spent all day dreading the possibility that my phone might ring, despite knowing that it didn't happen. When I walked into the kitchen this afternoon, I looked at the door, listening for her, and I knew she wouldn't come in. She's due home Sunday night.

I should have called my ex to talk to her, and for a while it seemed like the perfect solution, but I didn't think of it until nighttime, and at this hour, I'd be leaving a shaky-sounding voicemail begging to hear from my daughter in the morning. My ex doesn't return my calls when he has her, though. She doesn't call, and that would be infinitely worse than just trying to make it through the day, just reminding myself that even if the memories of the dream feel as real as any other memories I have, none of it happened.

I still feel sick and exhausted, I don't want to drive anywhere, and I hate that anything that takes my mind off it is only temporary.

So one time, at the cheese factory, someone walked up to me in my new hoodie, and without preamble, cut the ties that pull the hood tight because we weren't allowed to have any loose items or jewelry above the waist. So I clipped a stuffed turtle to my belt loop in protest, and no one ever said a word against it.

I made that damn turtle a raincoat out of an empty bag of latex gloves, and it worked with me for over a year. Yes, I've told that story before, but I told it better this time.

Depression is Depressing.

I am miserable with my life. It doesn't count as suicide if you just ask God to hurry up and smite you, right?

To reassure anyone who thinks this theatrics, I am currently technically homeless, and living with a family member who needs help. This house has been seriously compared to Hoarders by worried family. I live out of a suitcase because my personal belongings, including my bed and perishable food items (which were mistakenly delivered with the rest), are divided between several people's storage units. I hope someone finds the food before spring, though I'm sure that by now it's been cold enough for the water bottles to explode and warm enough for the milk to sour. There are four cats in the house, three of which use the litter box, four in the garage who don't have a litter box, but get let outside sometimes, and two in the back room who neither have a litter box nor go outside. One must enter and exit through the garage, which, no offense to those up above, stinks to high heaven.

My friends live online because those I graduated college with have moved on. I have an amazing phone, a few really amazing friends, and severe, sometimes debilitating depression, as of about fifteen years ago. I used to tell myself that the worst that could happen would be ending up homeless and alone, but I've pushed my "worst" standards to far more horrible things. I am not currently being eaten alive by maggots while impaled in a hole full of spikes and having hail pound into my open eyes. Please, please, God, please, don't use my sense of sarcasm against me and make that happen.

Irony (or not, if you know all the technicalities of the word) is that just over a year ago I was set to graduate college, then move to the Golden State of California, where my daughter would attend a private school for hardly anything, thanks to one of those amazing friends, and I would be nearer the kind of job opportunities I'd dreamed of. My ex questioned me, gave me the verbal go-ahead, and took our flight information so that goodbyes could be said, we got the kid a cell phone for easy contact, got a Facebook so they could chat easily, etc etc.

Sunday before graduation, a week and two days before the flight, yours truly was delivered of a restraining order and a motion to take any and all custody away from me. After a week of locating a lawyer (since if you don't have one, at least here, the case defaults to the other person), during which I didn't sleep and unknowingly contracted pneumonia, I completed no final exams and was given a pity D to graduate in a class I'd been acing. Damned final exams. I don't really remember graduation. Had a high fever that day, and was super-proud that no one could tell how dizzy I was.

Anyway, after bouncing from place to place, I failed out of an attempt at grad school (admittedly a subject I ended up hating) and here we are. The child is tired of moving and living with other people, and despite the emotional abuse she suffers when with her other parent, I wonder if I'm doing any better.

"You should get on disability."

It's really disheartening to be told this, especially following a short speech about not being capable of handling a real job and needing to be realistic. It is disheartening both from one's (ex)friend, and from one's father. There is no explaining to some people that working for minimum wage 5 hours per day, 4 days per week isn't much motivation for someone who feels worthless. There is no explaining that 8 hours a day 5 days a week at a job one loves, being needed there instead of expendable, might just possibly maybe somehow ease the feeling of being useless, and that being paid enough to live on one's own might instill a sense of greatly needed pride, thereby propelling one out of one's dismal hole of hopelessness. And unfortunately, when pressured so much to get a job I've already not been hired at for years, it is difficult to contemplate looking for that big fish. It only makes the whole "not capable of handling a real job" thing all that more real, and the big fish looks like a dried-out goldfish the cat left behind the couch. It was shiny once, but all that's left now is a lost dream.

And yes, this is probably all ridiculous and blown out of proportion, but no matter how I try to correct myself, I can't get out of the mindset that "If you were capable of getting an A, but got a B, you might as well have failed."

I have now been struggling with depression for half my life. It doesn't get better for long at a time. The littlest setback is heartbreaking, and losing a dream that was in my grasp broke me. I've never been as close to hurting myself as I was a year ago, and though I don't intend to—in fact, I intend not to—it can always be worse, and that's what I'm afraid of. If I can hardly cope the way I am, how will I manage another ten years of this? Another twenty?

My depression is being treated, but there's no cure. I've apparently trained my mind to push aside my worries, and so anything that worries or distresses me is forgotten. I don't remember to do laundry when I have the time, nor to job search. If it does pop in, I'm busy, or I'm in a bad mood, or I'm too sleepy to do anything (or so I tell myself), and if I can't fill out an application properly, and better than anyone else, then it was not only a waste of my time, but a waste of the hiring manager's time. I feel like a waste of time.

I haven't blogged in forever because I had no internet access aside from my smartphone, which a friend thought I deserved, no matter that I don't (but it's mine! *clutches and hisses*). I don't even know where I'm going with this. Sudden memory loss in the middle of a sentence isn't odd when attempting to discuss worrisome or depressing topics, either.

Okay, I dragged you all down now, and gave you a taste of a long-term, severe depressive's thought process. I wish I could think of another cheese factory story right now, but since I can't, here:

Margaret Bourke-White. At the time of the Louisville Flood (1937)

It could always be worse, right?

Types of Depression

Suicide Prevention, Awareness, and Support

Changes in the HUD Definition of “Homeless”

Dream Interpretation

I dreamed I went to school with Mr. Feeny. Yes, Mr. Feeny, the teacher from Boy Meets World.

Let's start from where I remember: for some reason I'm married, and I'm cleaning the house. It's a nice house, at least two stories, very spacious. All it has in it is the hand-me-down stuff I currently own and tons of my stuff shoved against the walls in piles, but I'm trying to clean those up before Mr. Feeny arrives.

When he shows up, I've done a decent job and I'm dressed nicely, except for the towel I've still got my freshly-washed hair wrapped up in. Don't ask how I managed to get dressed without noticing that. So we get ready to go to school together, which we've apparently done before, and we're all buddy-buddy as we walk out the back door.

Instead of a lawn, however, there's a busy street and a train going past where my house just was. There's also a guy chasing a fluffy white dog along next to the tracks, and I'm worried one of them is going to get run over. Then the dog changes into a little blonde girl, and so now he's chasing his daughter next to the tracks, and I'm even more worried. I want nothing to do with this. Then the little girl turns into a preteen boy who is walking along the edge of the street instead of using the sidewalk. That's a little less terrifying.

Anyway, Mr. Feeny is trying to hail a police officer. If we can get a ride to school from the police, he saves gas and time because he doesn't have to find a place to park. After a few minutes of this, I point out that it could take a while to do so, and that my car is parked along the edge of the street. I tell him I'll drop him off and he can run to class, and then if he'll just let my tardy slide... An attack of conscience quickly follows that request. How can I ask him not to count me tardy when I would be? In real life I'd have been all about getting that free tardy, but in the dream it offended my moral sensibilities. Go figure.

No clue what else would have happened there, since my alarm woke me up, but I did have another dream as well. I had waken up and was visiting family in a nearby town, keeping in mind at the time that my daughter was at school for the day instead of home sick like she has (in real life) been for the past couple days. I run some errands, and just when something incredibly important comes up, I realize that, as it's the last day before the holiday break, her school gets out at 1:30. (This is actually true. I often have dreams set in the day that will come when I wake up. I guess it lends more realism to the misery about to follow).

I panic. I tell my dad that no, I can't help my sister, I have to go now because my daughter has just gotten off school and the bus will be bringing her home in an hour. It's an hour's drive. I take off, and through traffic and road construction I make my way home, long after the bus should have shown up. I imagine that she's gone home and panicked because no one's there to let her in and the police have been called and I'll end up in prison for leaving a child at home alone. Then I realize that I didn't send her to school at all, and that she was asleep when I left. This gets me out of prison, but how much of a panic must she be to have waken up alone? She must be starving from not having been fed! In what horrible state will I find her?

The answer: Sitting on the couch reading a comic book. (She's been doing this a lot lately.) She's fine, though she wondered where I was, and she's hungry. Could I make her a bagel? I do so, in echoes of this morning, when she came in the living room, sat down with a comic book, and asked for a bagel. That dream is going to torment me all day.

So apparently I want to send her to school instead of staying home again for illness, and I'm feeling guilty about not going to school myself. And I want Mr. Feeny to come bully me into shape or something. I don't know, I totally made that up.

Dreamsight is 20/20

I wrote something yesterday morning intending it to be worthy of my first blog, but in hindsight, it makes no sense. Therein lies the problem with writing down a dream. When I woke up, it was so profound that my entire life was about to change simply from the memory of it! I was going to become a better person, start building toward my waking dreams, to fulfill my full potential at last. I just needed to write it down so I could call upon my muse when I was fully awake! What follows is the masterpiece I wrote, copied for your enlightenment and the betterment of our world!

I would like to say that I had the most bizarre dream ever last night, but that would be a lie. (The one with the giant chicken was pretty damned weird.) No, it was like most of my dreams, in that it felt like it could totally happen. Sort of.

I was living with my family again, dragged back to high school. We resided in a massive house that never actually existed, and couldn't exist because it was stuck together like The Burrow from Harry Potter. There were walls missing in some places, stairs that went through walls and outside to go up to the next floor, a swimming pool in the middle, and who knows what else. It was awesome, really. If I had that house, I'd give tours for five dollars a person, and it'd be a bargain.

*house*

I was rich; very, very rich. So rich that my daughter went to private school and I had private jets and helicopters and several bedrooms. Yes, somehow high school was mashed together with the present, but I never question these things.

One dark and stormy night (why not?), two people tried to break into my house and steal it. I'm pretty sure they actually attempted to steal the entire house, and parts of it broke during the ensuing battle. I, being the epitome of wisdom, kindness, and patience that I am, realized somehow that they weren't actually after my house or my money. They were only poor and down on their luck, and desperate for salvation.

*angel*

Of course I immediately offered the lady thief's daughter a place at the private school and bought her her own house. She sobbed and thanked me, and all I could think was that I felt a lot better, considering my fabulous life was a sham. My house was missing walls and had a parking garage on the second floor, for chrissake! Not to mention my grandparents had just died and I had no clue where my family had gone off to. Thank goodness my daughter was in school and oblivious.

Anyway, I decided to invite my friends over. All of them, for an epic party. My dad was around again, and I was back in high school. But after the attempted burglary, at least the house had been repaired and was a proper mansion. I'd hate to have friends over to a messy house.

The first person to arrive was someone from halfway across the country. I seriously hadn't expected her because we've never met face to face, but there she was with a backpack, ready to go. I think her mom drove her. I was still recovering from the shock when another friend in that same part of the country showed up. Screw being shocked at this point. I was ready to have fun!

*party*

The possibilities were endless. We could mock the fact that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and just sit around talking and watching movies, or we could go out and make a public nuisance of ourselves, which I'd never bother doing alone. We could all go on a pilgrimage to Disney World, or fly off to some exotic locale, or my alarm could go off just when someone else was arriving.

*kill snooze*

NINE MORE MINUTES! I only had to fall asleep for nine more minutes to see who else would show up!

*desperate attempt*

Being as excited as I was, there was no falling asleep and I cursed myself for not having gone to bed half an hour sooner so the dream could have finished! But no! Then I'd have missed the friend I talked to before bed and it might never have happened! All I could do was treasure what I had, like a child who lost all but one marble down the grate.

*marbles in grate*

*save one*

*cuddle*

*stare*

*closeup, with dreamhouse*

Looking over it now, I don't think this is going to alter my life, though I do like the addition of directions. I think those were meant to become pictures. *shrug* I can pick through it all to find bits of truth, like the deep-seated fear of losing my home, and my wish for the means to help others the way I've been helped, but the dream is missing one important point; how the hell do I get there?


Update: I lost my marbles. Of all the metaphors I could have chosen... Seriously, how did I not notice that?