AKA A benign re-visitation to the nightmares of earlier times...
I had
lovely Sunday. I went down to Ottawa and had brunch with Fred and Laura at a
pub near where they live then went for a walk with Fred along the canal and
then met up with a friend of mine from Deep River.
My
friend had been out of town and her husband had read my blog while she was away.
(Really, her husband had read my blog? I find this SO bizarre. I find it
bizarre that anyone would read my blog, especially the husband of a friend. I
see myself as so full of self-pity as to be nauseating and I can’t imagine the
attraction that reading this would hold, at all.) He had become concerned
upon reading my last post, titled “Bye”.
When I was a teen I had a repeating
dream scenario that was a metaphorical representation of my erratic
mental state. I would dream the same dream over and over, with variations.
Where I was physically in the dream landscape represented where I was
emotionally in my waking life. (I was not a happy teen.)
My dreamscape had two distinct settings;
one the downtown core of a huge city and the other a vast field of wheat. The
city had long straight grey streets, canyons with skyscrapers soaring up on
all sides. It was always eerily quiet in the city. And very grey. Overcast. Gloomy. Dark. There was no indication of people or traffic. Just the
buildings. The very tall buildings. The wheat fields were outside the city and
stretched for miles. It was always sunny out in the fields with a sky blue and
a gentle warm caressing breeze idyllically waving the wheat shafts. It too was
a silent landscape but a far safer one. They were very different these two
landscapes, one closed in, cold, and forbidding, the other open, warm, and
free.
On bad days I would find myself - in
my dream - lost, wandering the dreary streets of the downtown core, with the
buildings looming menacingly on all sides of me. I didn’t like being in the
city. Being there, even just walking below the buildings, was dangerous, ominous;
they represented such a temptation, such a threat.
On really bad days I would be on top
of a building looking over the edge and considering jumping. In my dreams I
never climbed to the top of the buildings, never took the elevator, I would
just suddenly be there, standing, contemplating. I never actually jumped in my
dreams but as a teen I believed that if you died in your dream you died in
real life too, so standing out there alone on the ledge, looking down to a street
far below - even when I recognized that I was in a dream - was scary. I can to
this day remember the isolation and desolation I felt, so frequently, as I
stood, silent and still, looking down.
(When I was a teen my mother worked as
an ambulance driver. Her least favourite job was using a spade to shovel up the
remains of the jumpers and put them into body bags.)
On better days, however, I would be
out in the fields, the sun warm on my back, the city so far off in the distance
that only the tops of the tallest building were visible over the wheat - but
still there, a distant yet present threat.
On really good days I would be way out
in the fields, so far away from the city that I wasn’t even aware of it,
couldn’t even tell which direction it was in. I could spin round freely, arms
flung out, spin and spin and have no idea where the city was. Freedom.
I would dream and re-dream this silent
landscape, but also, after it became an established part of my psyche, just
check in on it at random times to see where I was and how careful/happy I needed/could
be. It was my own private suicide watch system.
I do not dream this dream anymore. I
have grown out of it. But I know that at present, were I to go there, I would
not be walking the silent grey city streets, feeling the height of the
skyscrapers pressing in on me and worrying about finding myself suddenly
standing, yet again, unexpectedly, unhappily, on top of one of those
metaphorical buildings and looking contemplatively down down down. No. If I
were to go there right now I’d be out in the field so very far from the city as
to be oblivious to its existence. I would be happy. Free. Safe.
Which is why it was a shock that my
friend’s husband read potentially suicidal thoughts into my blog entry. I have
been there so often, have had so many episodes of such deep depression that
the taste of the idea of suicide is a
familiar friend, but now, no, not now. I am full of self-pity now and whinging
and whining up a storm. I have passed through angry and bitter, on my journey
back towards happy, and am firmly stuck in the complaining and carping stage
(if such exists) but I am not, thankfully, black enough as to be considering,
even for a second, a final goodbye. Which is good. Of course. Very good.
And then I came home and wrote yet another extra blog entry. Yes. A lovely Sunday.
