i had a rather bizarre dream in which society was a group of giants from which young women had to escape. escape itself involved a long-drawn out and complex process of tricking the giants, confusing them, and finally slipping free. i was sort of one of the women, sort of watching; the problem was that i felt sorry for my giant and we had a good relationship. the consequence was that i was helping him catch me and he was helping me run away.
odd.
i went to sleep at 10 last nite w/ a migraine. it was my second in three weeks, which is unusual for me, but which makes sense considering the emotional turbulence. i guess my body was just exhausted. have you noticed how ridiculous depression seems to you when you’re not depressed? that’s how rational people react to you when you’re driving yourself crazy. even if they’ve been depressed, they simply can’t recall how it felt; they can’t empathize. yet when you are depressed, you can’t imagine being in that healthy, rational, one-with-the-world state of mind, and when they are, neither can they. it’s a paradox: no one healthy can really help anyone depressed. certain approaches work better than others, i guess. the best, in my experience, is just getting the other person to go to sleep, if you can manage that w/o condescension (nothing is worse than hearing “go sleep it off.”) sleep is a great dissembler. when you awake, you have an instant of choice where you can return to your previous state or try something wholly new. it’s an opportunity waking life rarely affords you.
yesterday was my brother’s 21st birthday. jesochrist. he has a fantastic way of dealing w/ depression: he turns it to anger. when we both lived at home, i remember vividly how he’d march upstairs, slam the door, and pace his room, muttering curses i could occasionally make out through my closed door across the hall. sometimes he’d throw things. sometimes he’d spend hours writing Rants, which were scathing, often funny, & extraordinarily long. but when he emerged, in general, he was fine. anger is easier to work off, i think.
here’s hoping this coming week involves neither anger nor depression. i’ll deal w/ everything logically and calmly, and there will be no disappointments too overwhelming. i will keep perspective. not that i can truly remember how shitty i’ve felt off and on the last few weeks (see above,) but i’m reasonably sure it sucked.
happy november, everybody.