Disclaimer - this is not a very sexy blog. Its dark and deep. Different from what I've written about before. But hey, I'm bipolar, so what were you expecting?
Metallica - Enter Sandman
Metallica - For Whom the Bell Tolls
Metallica - Sad But True
I’m sorry that I haven’t answered my emails in a couple days but I had a nightmare.
I don’t dream like a normal person does. I dream to the max, like how people in a TV commercial for diet soda are supposed to be living their lives. My dreams are intense - they spin effects on many different levels, somehow they drag in personal emotions from my real life into these spontaneous fictional situations, which are perceived by all my bodily senses. A maximum dream. Its like I’m briefly visited by Stephen King on his way his from an Apocalyptica concert.
This dream left me shaking, breathing heavy, unsure about what was real and riddled with anxiety. I have not left my apt in 2 days, turned on my work phone or eaten anything besides Cheerios.
I dreamt my cousin, Kristen (nearly my same age, spent much of my life with, who I loved dearly) was dead, her body finally found and returned to the family for proper burial. When I woke up from the dream I had to stop myself from phoning her to make sure she was still alive. I needed to be sure. Instead I focussed on taking some deep calming breathes, and calmed down. I checked her facebook page and saw that she was active recently and that reassured me enough to put the phone down. Easy does it. I don’t want them thinking I’m any more crazy than they already do.
Another reason I wanted to blog about this was because many people fear that manic depressives can not control their impulsivity. This is not true. Yes, it can be a struggle but it can be managed. I wish that more of my normal friends/clients could control their equally destructive drunken dialing episodes.
Let me tell you about my dream. I highly recommend that you listen to Metallica’s Black album while you read. I’ve posted some links above if you don’t have it on itunes.
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I had finally taken the vacation of my dreams. I was exploring an island in the South Pacific (I’m not sure which one). I had just returned from a day of tasting exotic fruit and volcano hiking when I got the phone call that Kristen had been found. Not only had the hope that she would be found alive came to an abrupt and cruel end, but my fantasy vacation had also been robbed from me too. It never rains, it pours.
In my dream (not in reality), she had been working as a stripper and her disappearance taken as tragic, but not surprising. Evidently what happened to her was this - she had answered an ad to become a nanny but the person who posted the ad abducted her, tortured her and eventually killer her. Her body was found in a lab much like Josef Mengele must have had. It was a scene out of an episode of CSI playing out in my dream. The man responsible was not captured. It looked like the lab had been abandoned for months.
When I got home naturally I was upset and had to deal with other stressors in my life. It was a time when I was still at my fathers and before my diagnosis. My stepmother still hated me, and threatened that if I kept crying too much I was going to embarrass her in front of everyone at the funeral. She pressed my father on how long I would remain a childish burden to them. I missed Kristen so much it hurt to breathe.
After the wake, I had to pick up my brother. I was driving an old model station wagon, specifically a 1987 Chevy Celebrity. The kind that families used before the invention of the minivan. On the way home something grabbed my attention, I saw a man with a necklace that had to be my cousins. I knew it was hers. I just knew it. I had a chain just like it, a long delicate gold chain, with a round pendant scattered with precious gems, diamonds and sapphires. I had the same one and instantly recognized the design, felt the weight of the cool metal against the skin, felt his unease with the trinket, her aura still strong around it.
For some reason we drove the exact same brown station wagon. I followed him to his new death lab. He kept people in cells and drawers and chains. Some of the people he had were so starved that they hungrily ate the giant red millipedes he fed them from a brown paper bag. And they were grateful. Nobody wore anything except for shackles made of brown leather and cool metal. I left before I could figure out what he was doing with them. I didn’t want him to see me, and I couldn’t be late picking up my brother. All I knew was this was what my cousin had gone through all because she answered an ad because she wanted a job as a nanny because she was tired of the late hours of stripping. And don’t get caught, don’t get noticed, don’t be late.
I left to go pick up my brother. I didn’t want to tell my father and step-mother because I didn’t think they would believe me. I knew my brother would though and I drove him to the lab. I don’t remember much more about the dream. I do have some sense of finality after this last part so I assume that the man was brought to justice. Its only a dream though, so it doesn’t really matter in the end.
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I feel like until today my blog has given you just one impression of me. I know this particular blog entry sounds awful, scary and terribly unsexy. Maybe there are some of you who think I may have spoiled BSW’s sexy passionate call girl image by writing it. But I’m all of these things. Its who I am. It was meant to explain, intrigue and help in its own way.
From the beginning, this blog was meant to help me deal with how bipolar disorder affects my life. Since this dream affected me and caused my behaviour to change for 2 days it was obviously significant and I needed to think about it. So it was important to include this entry too. The BSW blog is primarily for myself, but with the encouragement of a friend I thought that it would also be good to share this with others for its potential to educate, advocate and entertain. I’ve shared my bipolar sandman with you for all these reasons. I hope you can handle it, if not perhaps you should work on building up some inner strength, tougher skin and a broader mind. Just a suggestion, nothing more.
I see just as much ugliness in the world as I do beauty. This is probably why I try to focus so much on the goodness and beauty in life, and have chosen a job that can spread pleasure.
I feel better now. Writing this out in black and white has helped me digest it and I don’t feel so incapacitated by it anymore. Its been a couple days. I think I might go for a walk, have an ice cream and turn my phone back on.
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