I had the weirdest dream a couple of nights ago. I was in my huge home (not my real home), trying my best to stay calm while hurriedly shutting glass windows and doors. There was a horde of school kids, all in plain white shirts, seemingly normal-looking, but trying oh-so-persistently to get inside my home.
The scene made it very clear to me that they were not supposed to be welcomed. They had this blunt affect on their faces, all the more making the scene super-creepy. There were two grown men with them; one warned me and said I should never allow these kids in.
Successfully, I managed to lock all windows and doors with a considerable amount of struggle. Just as I have started to let out a huge breath of relief, a kid came out from INSIDE my home and rushed out of the gate. I yelled and panicked and tried to stop him/her but was not fast enough. The horde of weird kids started coming in in a frenzy, like normal-looking zombies.
The creepier part was seeing the grown men, especially the one who warned me, aggressively pushing the windows open to let themselves in.
I’ve had dreams about being chased or on the run. But this one — of being in a structure that I thought was secure enough to keep the enemies out and of being proven wrong was so much worse. I woke up feeling very tired and a bit scared.
My kids and I laughed and cringed at how scary this dream was. Throughout the following days, I could not stop thinking about it. I am not a huge fan of psycho-babble crap about dreams and their meanings but I just couldn’t let it go.
I have been toying around buzz words like “antidepressant”, “mental health”, “self-care”, and “asking for help” for months and months in my head. It all started when a neurologist/friend/colleague tactfully suggested that I consider starting myself on an antidepressant. This was in June. She said taking the drug was not a sign of weakness. It could be the help that I very much needed.
All this talk and social media posts about “mental health” awareness. I love them and I hate them. I support them. I try not to judge people with mental issues. But bullshit, I was and never will be one of them. I am smart and stable enough to keep myself from falling into those potholes, thank you very much.
Or so I thought. For various reasons, I held back on taking the drug. My ever-supportive sister asks. “What’s stopping you? You’d tell me to take it if it were me in your place”. My loving usband says okay but do you want to wait a bit and see if things get better after our upcoming family vacation? They both love me and they both mean well.
In the meantime, I have made small changes to deal with the matter. I have lessened my work load; my lighter schedule has made my daily commute so much better ( I cannot believe I drove around so much on a daily basis for years!). I learned to swim and on a few random, victorious days, I would drag my lazy ass to the village pool and swim, and catch my breath, and swim – trying to think more of Gillian Anderson and less of sharks and of my inadequacies as I swam lap after lap with too-long breaks in between.
I crocheted like a lunatic and managed to conk out more than half a dozen coasters in a couple of days. I brought down boxes of my stash of cotton thread, organized them by color group, and, in my mind, planned out ombre sets for my set of true-to-life although mostly online friends. (I find our chat group to be very therapeutic).
I read and read. My kindle was my bestfriend. I learned how to read and crochet at the same time, each task accomplished a bit slower than I could have if I had stuck to one task at a time, but why should I do that? This multitasking feat of mine is so much fun.
I read and highlighted my bible and scribbled on the edges like a mad woman. Colors, notations. With a considerable amount of tears shed in between pages.
I helped my kids prepare for exams. I printed out math worksheets like my life depended on them. When the printer ink ran out, I scribbled the worksheets by hand. Mock exams about “sinaunang Pilipino”, and “mga uri ng pang-uri”, and “puberty and male and female reproductive system” (kudos to the author who defined internal versus external fertilization and gave animals as examples – I saw the teenage son make this face like a half smile-half cringe at the definition as I went over the difference with the youngest; it was the cringe that made me cringe inwardly. But I digress).
I brushed the golden retriever’s fur. I sat at my clinic like the compassionate and dutiful physician that I thought I was. Each patient (or so I hope) walking out (or being wheeled out) feeling better than when they first came in. I look on as they leave the room, grab the next chart, pat myself at the back and dismiss this feeling of blah in between. Emptiness? Nah. So cliché. I am way too good and too grateful to feel this empty.
Every day, I shower and dry my hair and stick these ridiculously expensive tinnitus maskers into my ears. I adjust the volume every now and then. I adjust the wires to make sure that they stay hidden beneath my hair and inside my earlobe. All is well.
As I set out, grab my things, and prepare to drive to work, my heart is gripped with fear. Where is my confident self, where did she go? Where is the person who always knew that no matter what the day brings, I could handle it. I miss her. My load is light, for goodness sake, now is not the time to be fearful. And why do I keep feeling like I forgot something, or that I should be somewhere else? Why do I catch myself panicking for not being up for a task that, later on, proves to be not due until the day after tomorrow? Who am I? Where did my old self go?
And so here I sit, feeling tired from all the effort. I want to chart my progress as any type A, control freak is wont to do, and I realize one thing: I have been grasping at straws. How long should I do this? I told my real, online friends not to worry because I am out of the pit, thank God. Am I?
Borrowing the words of A.J. Filkry:
“I don’t want to die,” A.J. says after a bit. “I just find it difficult to be here all the time…”
Perhaps the dream was a message reminding me not to be complacent. You think you are out of the woods but you are not. You think that grown up man is there to help you but he wants to bring you down. You are not as secure as you think. You are not as stable as you think. You need help.
The Bible, my Bible, my rock. Today it spews out words that touch me at the core, per usual. Today it was from Psalms (again!):
We are like a bird escaped from the snare of the fowlers;
The snare is broken,
And we have escaped!
Psalm 124:7
Oh, how I long to escape!