Dreaming Seasons

It came to me first as a dull echo of the night before. I had lain in bed a hour, and sleep was no closer. The previous night's images came to me as I let my mind drift.

My dream had happened in real life, but things were all mixed up, as they tend to be in dreams. The images were holding a slideshow in my head. I couldn't stop the show, or change the slides. The images and people, their repetition and intensity, brought that temperament on me. I felt myself painted into a corner, a corner filled with red echoes of memories. Just thinking about this dream as it drifted into my mind brought a clamminess to parts of my body, and with each breathe I became more intensely emotional. Darkness filled the room around me. Only the warmth of two little brown dogs, sleeping with me, kept me in bed. I wasn't going to sleep.

I came to a realization. Maybe it means something, or doesn't. It was more of a self-realization.

I am bipolar in my sleep, in my dreams. It's not depression, mania, or anxiety that plays out in my dreams. It's the little building block bipolar pieces that go together to make me, me. For example, my tendency to be patient, and more patient, and even more patient when confronted with life friction.

Nobody can see those little bipolar building blocks. They are locked away in the puzzle of my personality. Life, or the way I see things, caused me to have a tug on my shirt sleeve to keep me going, to keep the train on the tracks, progressing through life. But the farther I travel those train tracks, the more tense and dense those bipolar building blocks become. The more dense and intense my emotions, the more difficult it is to travel forward, struggling up a hill each second of the day. At some point my system for coping breaks down. Everything breaks down, my emotional being is blasted as though those little bipolar building blocks are mini-kegs of nitroglycerin.

I explode. The peace of my environment and continuity of my friendships are shot to hell. Unpredictable, others would say of me.

It's just that I take it until I can take it no more. Because I usually portray a patient visual exterior, the emotional blast version is almost unbelievable. I can't help it. Explosions happen when one puts fire to dynamite It';s just my train of bipolar building blocks, headed on to the path of tomorrow.