March 28th, 2011.

I am a dreamer and I dream of the things that are yet to be. My heart is a well of whispers, and my soul is a maze of dusty corridors, all barely lit. I am not a prisoner here, nor a guest, but a mere ghost; I am a memory of myself, wherein I keep the little one I once was. There I always light a single candle, over and over, and it never burns my hands. To the dark of all, I carry my light.

This was not supposed to be an idle ode to nothing, or to a life that often feels unlived, because in truth, none of our lives are ever completely unlived. None of us ever completely lie shallowly by our shadows and wallow into death, not even the most horribly depressed. Their sadness and nothingness becomes their coating, like others may be coated by sugar; but they have content. By now I've spent some meager decades having others constantly trying to diagnose me with depression, and though I find the diagnosis fascinating by simple means of psychological literature, I have no desire to go along with ill judgment. I spent too many years being stuck in those books, doing things with my time which I thought I was supposed to do, so I could have a bland, nondescriptive and happy existence helping others; which I really wanted. But at the same time, on the side of that, I involuntarily spent my teenage years and young adulthood being horrifyingly ill, never accomplishing anything and only fighting against my own body. On more than one occasion, I have been nothing more than a caged bird; I do not remember how to fly as I never learnt it. There are, of course, many stages of important development during one's life, most of them occur early on. I had those too, mixed in a sea of abuse, alcoholism and what I now perceive as mental disorder of a parent. Literature tells us that in particular, the last one is severely devastating. It forces children to become caretakers, and once they are caretakers, they are not children anymore. I have recently been fighting all the notions of my own field, but I must admit that they will succeed in branding me with things less common and more difficult to treat than depression. I may have been better off with the ill advise of others; now I will really have to make an effort to change. And at this point I don't really care to debate whether this is the correct decision, as this is usually the argumentation of those who are standing on the other side and have no knowledge of reoccurring panic attacks, hyperventilation, tics and other repetitive behaviours. At the point that this happens and you count in the previous information, it's safe to assume that some horribly intangible trauma is lodged deep beneath the surface; and it's refusing to move, even if you ask nicely.

I have asked nicely a lot. Asking nicely generally doesn't solve many problems, as people are very oblivious to the impact of their own actions and choices. I have not been allowed to be ignorant. What I have found the means to do is dream. I dream when I wake, I dream while awake and I dream while I sleep. I do not partake in lucid dreaming nor do I have much confidence in this. When I sleep, my dreams are hurried and strange, much like everyone else's, but I dream emotionally and raw. By now, I've spent more time in the nightmare department than anyone sane ever should, and I've come to like it there. After all, it's just me I'm facing off. The monsters and the creatures are my own, the scars are the ones I have made, and how I always die at the end is just how I feel, all the time, for as long as I can remember. I am dying over and over, just to wake; it's the rebirth and I am the phoenix. I am a dreamer and I dream of the things that are yet to be. I dream of my scars fading and my heart waking, one last time, not to fall asleep again. I dream of all the stars that have already faded before my eyes, of the ones who loved me when there was no ones else; I dream of their faces and their voices and their kind, soft hands. I dream of ever growing stronger; and I am, continuously, always. And in my dreams I light a single candle, over and over, and it never burns my hands. To the dark of all, I carry my light.