A weird thing that happened to me in these months of panic, that’s the working title till I find something catchy, Period of panic?- is that I started losing sight of reality. I couldn’t tell dreams from actual life.
I got stuck in dreams. In the dreams, I would be aware that I was dreaming, try to wake up, move a limb, yell or call someone to wake me up. But my body seemed incapable of helping me. In one of the dreams, mummy was smothering me with a pillow. In another, I saw animal carcasses, cut, and bleeding but trying to move. At the same time, they seemed so normal, concerning posters, changing clothes, putting bedsheets on beds & eating mango pickle. I realized I had put dadi’s phone to charge in my dream when she asked me to put it to charge in the morning, I realized I hadn’t in reality doodled in my diary or watered the plants. I feel like I am picking shards of reality out of a very long, scary dream.
Other things from my days of distress (?):
- Dreams or not, I woke up from chest aches every morning.
- My therapist went on a break. I met a new therapist, who dug up my past & left me feeling sore & aching. I continued crying after I got out of his office, my eyes & heart hurt for days after that.
- I went to the Andaman islands with my family. Mummy got very sick & we began to lose control. I was in a state of panic throughout. Goldie broke his bones while we were there. I felt (read feel) so much guilt for organizing the trip that I cannot look at the photos or talk about the trip.
- I started having thoughts of self-harm.
- Mummy started feeling better after a change of medication. After a trip with her siblings, she came home empathic, happy & full of praise. She was the kind woman- she made & packed food for our house-help to take to her next job, in case she didn’t have time – I had known her to be my mother. I keep willing my mind & health to ‘get with it’, not worry & soak up these days of good health. But the change in mummy & hence my life happened in a far-away space, in a short-ish time. My mind, and its panic has not changed at the same pace as this life, & I feel a hollow space between myself & the person I am supposed to be.