Dreams

For years after my psychosis and hospitalization I was on a cocktail of anti-psychotics which made me unable to dream.  I would drop into sleep like a stone in a still pond and sink without a ripple.  For all those years of antipsychotics I was dreamless and depressed.  It took years to convince my new Shrink to let me go back on an antidepressant that would allow me to dream.  Why did I miss dreaming so much?  Because I never had nightmares.

When I was a child I had recurring nightmares.  I had good reasons.  And if I'd been seeing a shrink then, my dreams would have provided clues to the living nightmare of my young life.  But once I moved out of my parents house my dreams got good and I looked forward to dreaming.  I lived a better life in my dreams than I did in my real life. I took my good dreams for granted.  It was only during times of deep depression, when I was so depressed I couldn't read that I might have dreamed but couldn't remember my dreams.  Then, during the terrible years of caring for my horrible mother, as I began to disintegrate, I had my one and only psychosis, so far, knock wood.

Last night I had my first nightmare since childhood.  I dreamed I was in the main house with a man who, in the dream, was a friend. I have no idea in real life who he was, but in my dream we were close friends.  We were sitting in the kitchen talking and he left the table to retrieve something from his jacket in the hall closet.  I heard the voices of two other men and then a sound like a mellon splatting, as if hit with a baseball bat or dropped from a height onto concrete.  It was a sickening sound, and I knew that it was my friend's head that had made the terrible splat sound.  It was immediately clear to me that I was the next victim.  I raced for the stairs and locked myself in the upstairs bathroom, the only room in the house with a solid door and a good lock.  I could hear the men looking for me.  I had no way to call for help so I tried to squeeze out of the bathroom window onto the steep tile roof.  This is when I woke up.

It was cold in the house.  I always turn the heat very low at night.  I sleep better in a cool room.  It was early (7:30) for me.  I know the dream woke me up. Marly was snuggled against my back. She made a soft whiney sound when I got up.  I went to the bathroom, turned the heat up, and then got coffee.  Cyrus watches my moves when I get up, and only when my coffee cup is in my hand and I'm heading back to my side of the bed does he haul himself out of his bed and lumber to the door.

Yesterday my doctor asked me about my eating habits.  I was in for my once monthly clotting factor test.  Testing my clotting factor takes seconds but we always talk for at least half an hour, often about politics.  Well, among other things, politics is depressing me, I've become a shitty blogger, and now that the novel is out there in the world and on it's own, I have nothing to do but start working on something new.  And I got nothin'!  I'm uninspired.  I feel empty.  And the life I've led has left me with few friends and the few I've kept, are dying or dead.  How odd it is that I'm outliving the few women I've kept close. I never saw that coming.  Never imagined I'd live this long.  And until recently I was delighted with the small life I've created.  I keep thinking I've grieved for Zelita, but her absence has left a tattered hole in the fabric of my little life.  And nothing can mend it or fill it or make it all better.

I have plenty that needs to be done.  My house needs a good cleaning. The winter ravaged yard needs a bit of raking~debris falls from the trees during storms and now litters the walkways.  But all I want to do is go back to sleep and dream a different life.