And so it is decided? The earth is shaking and I’m having a Prozac dream. There’s a pervasive percussive clanging and banging going on and I’m in it, can not get out of it. Somehow I become vaguely aware of what is happening, and that I know the routine. So I try to remember that I am in bed, that this is just another of what I call my night terror dreams. These usually involve a mix of immediate family members, former college buddies, ex-boyfriends, me either flying or falling, a pervading sense of death and, once I become aware enough, the belief that if I do not wake myself up from this it will absolutely mean my demise. I’m deathly afraid of flying, but it sure beats falling. In this one I’m falling. Everything in me is calling out for anything in the atmosphere that might either reduce my anxiety (why do we never say increase our calm?) and awaken me. Oddly, on this occasion, just like every similar one before it, once I finally somehow find a center, some peace, I awaken. I do always manage to forget while in the midst of the terror that I do not need a stimulant to snap out of it; I need a sedative. As always, before I am fully aware of my existence, of reality, the ghost-faces of my terror-dream, and the soaring confinement of mourning in which I am soaring or falling at a pace that is painfully slow . . . finally, a fizzy phosphorescent light seeps through the cracks of my eyelids, and I have cognizance (of a sort).
My muted alarm clock is upside down on the carpet next to my bed. Swimming out of a miasma of sleep and dream, I inevitably have lift-off. This is the important stuff. This is ‘me.’ Weeks pass. Years, even.
