Resurrecting the Dream in 2005

            “I think you’ve lost your dream”, said the doctor.

            “I’m depressed because I’ve lost my dream?” the patient asked.

            “That’s what I think.”

            She glanced at him hopelessly and said, “Medication won’t fix that.  I don’t know how to get the dream back.”

            “Start by writing.”

                We have a goal to get out of bed by 9:00 am, but it’s only a goal, not a rule, she thinks as she watches the minute hand move toward 11:00.  “C’mon, get up”, she urges herself.  “You’ll feel better if you get something done.”  No wonder she has no energy to do anything—it takes all the will power she possesses just to get up in the morning.  No face washing, no teeth brushing, no hair brushing, no shower; drag on same dirty clothes from the day before—why put clean clothes on a dirty body?  Does she still hold any bargaining chips to spur her to accomplish any task, no matter how small?  The actual housework that one would expect from any fifty-three-year-old wife who has the luxury of staying home all day is far beyond her.  She can’t remember the last time she cooked, or mopped, or vacuumed, or swept, or dusted, or grocery shopped, or had sex with her husband.  But surely there’s some insignificant chore that might lend a sense of accomplishment.  She could allow herself some pleasure in trade, except there are no pleasures left.  What once were pleasures have become chores—more things that need doing.   She does have one new activity in her life however:  television viewing.  Even in her deepest bouts of prior depression she never stooped to wasting time watching the boob tube.  But now she reads carefully through the tv guide, checking the blurbs about each movie, figuring out when Law & Order is on, what programs would best fill in the gaps  between Law & Order, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Law & Order Special Victims Unit.  What a good thing her family wanted cable television.  How about one hour of yard work in exchange for all the Law & Order episodes for the rest of the day?  Too hot, too muggy, too wet.  Run the dishwasher?  No detergent.  Do laundry?  Maybe she could sort the laundry today and it wouldn’t be such a big chore tomorrow.  Or maybe she could put all the dirty clothes in the vicinity of the washer and dryer today, sort them tomorrow, and wash them the next day.  Baby steps.  What a worthless, lazy sack of shit you are, she thinks as she pulls the covers back over her head.    

                                                        

         The patient can remember two times when she comprehended why life seemed so worth living to most people.  One was fourteen years ago, in September of 1991.  She’d just been prescribed lithium.  It wasn’t a “happy pill”; it just made her feel wonderfully normal.  Like wouldn’t it be nice to make a loaf of cheese bread?  Didn’t the sun feel good shining on her shoulders?  She thought maybe God did love her after all.  But the effects of lithium didn’t last.

            So the new doctor prescribed lithium again fourteen years later, on the theory it hadn’t been tried long enough or in the right dosage or with the right complement of other drugs.  It worked for about three days, but those three days were enough to convince the patient that it wasn’t that she wanted something extraordinary out of life; that she couldn’t be content with the boring mundane routine of most days.  No, the day just felt right, good to be alive, good to laugh.  Life was sufficient in itself.  Until the lithium failed her again.   So now the patient is trying to write.  She’s nothing if not persistent.  A lesser person would have given up long ago, but the patient is stubborn and strong.  She knows her death will cause grief; she worries about the effect it will have on her children; she can’t stand to hurt her mother or her sisters; she hates to take one more person her husband loves away from him.  But she wishes, more than anything in the world, that she would die.

            “How does one live in the absence of significance or meaning?” the doctor asked the patient.   “Write about that.”

            The patient asks her philosopher son the question.  He advises her to read Sartre.  The patient thinks she isn’t living—she is only existing.  That’s how one lives in the absence of significance or meaning; one doesn’t.  What’s the point?  Why should she continue dragging herself from one day to the next?

           

               I only noticed it the other day.  How odd that a quote so apropos to how I feel would be Beth’s signature e-mail.   A television writer sums it up for me:

            "If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow.  Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we would be truly dead." - Angelus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

           So there’s no significance, no meaning, no passion, no hope, no peace.  Ain’t life grand!  I am dead already and just can’t stop walking around. 

-----------  2005