My Melancholia (MM)

I find that I have dreams that are more story-like than a fair number of other people. I never have dreams where I’m flying, falling, or anything like that. My dreams have characters and stories, and because of this, I find that they are sometimes capable of leaving me with a lasting impact on my disposition for days after a particularly meaningful one occurs.

As much as I love the few dreams I have that carry particular stories which resonate strongly with me, I also resent them for making me confront the fact that I have psychological needs which are not fulfilled. I mean, here I am, in one of the continent’s larger metropolitan areas, but despite being surrounded by people, I’ve never felt so… isolated. That type of alienation, and the remedy for it, sometimes emerges while I’m asleep.

For instance, last night, I dreamed a scenario in which a woman I used to know asked me what I really felt about her. We sat down and talked for a while, and I told her that I always wished things were different between us. I explained that until I met her, I didn’t understand how anything could make somebody feel so much pain and yet inspire so much desire to be closer to the source of that unique suffering. I quietly told her of how I sometimes caught myself gazing at her from across the classroom and wishing that just for a few minutes that I could be someone else - just so that I could be good enough to be near her. I relived, in conversation, for her the one time that she had hugged me for writing her a card that she said was “the sweetest thing anyone had ever written” for her, and the elation that had followed me for days afterwards.

I told her all of this, knowing that it didn’t make a difference… knowing that nothing I said would make her want to reach out to take my hand the way I wanted to reach out to take hers.
And yet, somehow the words my psyche invented for her to say cleared the bittersweet feeling from the experience. She looked me in the eyes, her perfectly chocolate brown hair swinging lightly, and she hugged me. As she did, she whispered softly, “I counted on you.”

I’ve yet to decipher what any of this meant, since my psyche wouldn’t manufacture so detailed a conversation without cause, but the unfortunate consequence of all of this is that I am struck with a new wave of…

I was about to say ‘homesickness,’ but I just realized that I’m not wishing that I was at home right now. I’m wishing that someone was here with me, just for a few minutes so that I could see a smile. Perhaps I’ll just call it person-sickness.