When I was around eight years old, I experienced a palpable shift in my emotions, where I was suddenly overwhelmed by sadness, and worry. I couldn’t have known back then, but that’s when my struggle with Depression began. I was involved in a lot of school activities, and lived in an apartment building filled with kids my age, so keeping my juvenile mind occupied during the day wasn’t difficult. At night though, I would do everything I could to avoid those in-between moments, the slow fade from willful action, to involuntary thought, to the peaceful drift of sleep.
If I closed my eyes, and sleep wasn’t instantaneous, my mind was off to the races. I worried about my family, about being taken away from my parents, world wars, plane crashes, and Armageddon. I feared the restless dead, the great beyond, and being turned into a shadow by the boogeyman, Mister Puff. I would do anything and everything to try to keep my mind occupied enough to be unthinking. My Rainbow Brite and Betty Boop dolls had dance competitions across my torso, I hid my Lite Brite under my pillow so it would be ready to go as soon as I knew my parents were down for the night. Sometimes I used it to create midnight masterpieces, eventually waking up with fluorescent pegs embedded in my skin, other times I used it as a light to read by, or the stage for shadow puppet theater. I’d sing songs, perform intricate bed-top gymnastic routines, anything that got me from wake to sleep, without the in-between.
Needless to say, mornings became a battlefield. My dad would drag me out of bed because I either wouldn’t or couldn’t do it myself. We brawled, and it only worsened as I got older…because yes, this carried on into my teenage years. As I aged, games and toys transitioned to reading, writing, and television. Somewhere in there I developed a fear of the world ending…but it only presented itself at night. I convinced myself that the world could only end in darkness, so as long as I stayed awake until sunrise, I knew it would be safe to sleep.
Over time, the depression and anxiety blossomed, so there was no longer the protection of nighttime containment. Though it now effected me during my waking hours as well, I still dreaded that march toward sleep the most. There were times when I let it consume me, telling myself things like “tears can be therapeutic”, and “a racing mind can lead to inspiration”…and sometimes I just didn’t have the energy to fight it. The older I got though, the deeper the toll it took on my life. I self-medicated for a while, and though it helped erase the in-between, and helped numb emotions I desperately tried to avoid, I felt I was losing myself. I am the type of person who needs to feel to be alive, regardless of how awful the things are that I’m feeling. With that wake-up call, I saved myself from a journey I may not have returned from, and began my current one, of self realization.
Two and a half decades later, sleep is still a struggle. With the stillness of each night, I wade through incessant waves of dark thoughts and fears. In an attempt to push them far enough out to sea, to rest my mind, I try to bombard myself with happy thoughts. Occasionally, it loops back around, reminding me that memories are of the past, starting the cycle of sadness over again, but when it works, it’s like a charm..like a movie reel, showing my most joyous memories of people, places, and things. I can’t remember how this practice started exactly, but it does whisper remnants of childhood pixie dust. So, until something more efficient comes along, I’ll continue to believe that if I think enough “happy, wonderful thoughts”, off I’ll go, to DreamLand.
