I sit quietly at the table, feeling small and insignificant. My head is bowed and my heart heavy. My Mom sits to my left. Her arms crossed and lips pursed into a thin, tight line. My father sits to my right. He is talking, low and fast. So many words spill from his mouth but all I hear is “We are disappointed in you.”
His words sink in and mix with my blood, flowing to every corner of my being and choking the best parts of myself. This news does not surprise me. I always knew, deep down, that I was a disappointment. A gnat to be swatted and forgotten. My belly responds to this knowledge with a sharp pain of confirmation and I shift uncomfortably in my hard chair.
Looking at my parents, their frustration and regret is evident from the clench in my Mom’s jaw to my Dad’s furrowed brow. How embarrassed they must be to call me daughter. They are so good; I am so bad. I want to slide off my chair and lay on the cool linoleum floor. To wither away until all that remains is bits of ash.
A disappointment. That’s me. A disappointment. Me. Me. Me. Tanya is a disappointment.
Again and again. Over and Over. I am a disappointment.
I believe.
My pain rescinds as the dark abyss beckons, and I consider surrendering to the numbness and sanctuary my depression offers me.
A soft breeze flows through our stale kitchen. I feel a light caress and a calm voice whispers gently in my ear. “Look outside.”
So I do. I see my Dad’s shop, the barn and a tractor.
“Look closer.”
I do. But still all I see is my Dad’s shop, the barn and a tractor.
“Look again.”
This time I really look. My Dad’s shop, the barn and a … tractor. But that’s not our tractor. That’s the tractor from the photo I used in a website I was designing.
I don’t understand but the calm voice continues to tell me to look closer. I turn my attention to the kitchen and reevaluate what I see. My parents are still at the table with me. Still upset. Still disappointed but … the fog is starting to lift and the truth lies underneath.
“The kitchen table, “I whisper”. “It’s not right. It’s the one from my childhood, but my parents remodeled the kitchen years ago. I don’t understand.”
I shake my head, trying to clear the lingering wisps of fog. “Is this a dream?”
I hear a faint “yes” as I wake-up in the here and now. I’m in LA, not my childhood home. Max is sprawled next to me, asleep and blissfully unaware of my fading nightmare. My heart still hammers and my stomach still aches, so even though it wasn’t real, my heart and soul believed, “I am a disappointment”.
Your Mind is Both a Friend and a Foe
I’m sharing a very personal dream with you because it has been two months since my dream and I’m still dealing with the aftermath. That day and many days afterwards, I could still hear echoes of “I’m a disappointment” in my head. I know it’s a lie but it still hurts, more than a knife to the heart ever could.
I have to remind myself that it not true; my parents are not disappointed in me. They have been extremely supportive and make a point to tell me how proud they are of me. To buoy me up because they know the water is murky and rough for me some days.
Our minds are truly magical. Mine paints such vivid pictures and spurs my imagination to great heights. It makes me believe in possibilities; it gives me hope. It can also be a real douche bag too. I must never forget that either.
I am the Captain of My Dreams and Nightmares
The unfortunate reality is that we have many dreams that we don’t remember. Ones where we get our asses kicked and lose big-time. The remnants of those dreams, especially those that mimic reality or our deepest fears, can really wreak havoc on our well-being, whether you suffer from depression or not. Our dreams or nightmares can affect us in little and big ways — to just feeling a bit off to believing the lies they tell us.
I am the Captain of My Dreams and Nightmares. I can control who the victor is and it will always be me. There may be times when a nightmare envelopes me when I am not aware enough to fight back in the moment, but I can pay attention to how I feel every morning. To recognize when a nightmare left some unwanted deposits in my soul like — doubt, fear and anger. I can fight those enemies. And most importantly, win.
Have you ever had such a vivid dream/nightmare? How do you combat them when they feed you lies?
Tanya
Wow, Tanya – SO powerful. And so true. Feelings are not to be trusted as our minds are full of lies. We tell ourselves lies and those lies sometimes sink deep, deep into our souls and torture us – whether consciously or subconsciously – for decades. But only we can uncover them, diagnose where they came from and work to retrain our minds of the truth. It’s a hard journey doing that, but one that is worth the effort. Many hugs to you, my friend. You are AWESOME.
Thanks, Laurie. Our minds are definitely full of lies and we (or at least I do) forget how deceitful it can be. I am just so grateful that I woke-up enough during the dream/nightmare to realize it was dream. Otherwise, it would have really knocked me down and I wouldn’t have known why I felt so low. There were still tough days, even knowing and constantly reminding myself of the truth. You’re absolutely right that we must do the work to uncover the truth and most importantly – retrain our brains. Hard work but worth the effort. You are AWESOME too, Laurie. Always appreciate your support, my friend!
Wow Tanya…. Your post made me tear up. You wrote such powerful words and thank you for sharing them with us. Our nightmares, although powerful, scare us and make us feel things we would rather not. But know that as they recede with the morning light, they are lies and you my friend are NOT a disappointment. I consider myself lucky to know you and to call you friend 🙂 XO
I held off on writing this post for awhile because I needed to work through it a bit. But I’m so glad I did because a tremendous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It’s amazing how shining that light and sharing, when appropriate, can really make lies and false beliefs lose their power. Our minds are so tricksy and we must never forget! Now you’re going to make me tear up and I also consider myself very lucky to call you my friend too, Mackenzie!
Tanya. This. I can SO relate to this. It was only a few months ago that I had a very vivid dream that I attempted suicide by slitting my wrists. I’m extremely squeamish about blood, and this dream had a lot of it. In my dream, as I was bleeding, I was not wanting to die. The dream was powerful. So powerful that within less than a week, I was seeing my off again/on again therapist. It scared me. It haunted me. And, I needed to combat it. We’ve been working through accepting that yes, the dream happened. Yes, my feelings and reactions to it are valid. But, what happened in the dream and what happens in real life do not have to be the same story. We’ve broken down the dream segment by segment. The story from my dream that I have focused on is the “not wanting to die” part of it.
Thank you for sharing your dream and having a space that I feel safe enough to share mine with you.
Erin, thank you for sharing your very personal dream with me. I definitely want to make this website a safe place because sharing is so key to our healing and moving forward. Even though I’ve often struggle with sharing because I am a very private person, I am committed to being real and authentic. It has also been very cathartic for me to share and I hope it lightened your load a bit too. Even more so, I’m glad you’re working with your therapist to process your dream. It’s amazing how they can affect us. My felt so real too. I was just so crushed and hurting and in physical pain when I woke-up. I am so grateful that I remember the dream versus it just sinking into my subconscious and wreaking all sorts of havoc and that you had the same experience.
Our thoughts can be such bully liars can’t they? They disguise themselves as other voices, but really they are our own. Mine is constantly telling me mean girl things, but I just try and smack her upside the head until she quiets down. They are just thoughts Tanya. Your beautiful truth lay somewhere just beneath them waiting to be uncovered!
Yes, they can be real jerks! Good for you for smacking your inner mean girl and telling her to shut-up. My beautiful truth – I like that a lot, Tonya. And it is there waiting for me to uncover it and I will.
I’ve had quite a few dreams that leave me feeling sick, or sad, or disgusted even after I wake up. The worst dream I’ve ever had also involves my family. I made a joke to a friend, who completely misinterpreted it and murdered my sister. Then my mom found out that it was my fault my sister had been killed and told me she didn’t love me anymore. I woke up crying, and I can still remember the feeling of loss even though it was a ridiculous dream and a scenario that makes no sense.
What I (try) to get out of it is just awareness. Losing the people I care about, and losing the love they have for me, is definitely my biggest fear and it’s hard because it’s not one you can just face, like fear of heights or dogs or whatever. I face it a little bit at a time every day as my sisters grow up and move further and further away, both physically and emotionally. It’s hard but it’s also a natural part of life, so while I take solace in the fact that we all care about each other and want to try to stay close, I also try to keep a realistic mindset on how close you can be with people who are on the other side of the country.
Isn’t it insane how vivid and real our dreams can feel? Where we swear they are really happening even if they don’t make a lick of sense? Our bodies certainly treat them as real. Even though I knew it wasn’t real, I still felt so shaky that day and ate a lot, which is bad for someone who is trying to get healthy. Awareness is a smart way to look at it because many of our deepest fears are not necessarily tangible things or things we can necessarily control, like death or disappointment. When we can distance ourselves and be a neutral observer, we can dissect the dream/nightmare and have a better understanding of the underlying fear/beliefs that may have lead to the dream.
oh hun, thank you for sharing this! my stomach was in knots just reading it, and i am glad it was a dream and not real life, but sometimes dreams can be worse for sure, because our own minds should not hurt us. i have had some crappy things in my life and in my dreams, and sometimes my mind mixes them up. i used to have a recurring nightmare where the dead guy with his mouth stitched up in hocus pocus chases me through an airport.. everyone laughs when i tell them that, but i had it like every week for over 10 years and no matter what is happening in your dream, waking up and feeling those remnants.. it drains you. it makes you not want to go to sleep, or not trust your mind. i had to talk to my therapist about it, and i had to switch therapists when the original one laughed at me 😉 (billy’s a good guy! hocus pocus is so funny! i was like thanks dude, not the point).
I get mixed-up by real life and dreams sometime too, because dreams can be so vivid that you would swear they were real. I cannot believe your original therapist laughed at you. Billy may have been a good guy in the movie (and I confess to watching that movie every Halloween!) but he clearly wasn’t in your dreams, which is what matters. What a bad therapist! They are supposed to help, not laugh and judge. Yes, those remnants are so powerful and linger for so long, even when you know they exist and are based on lies, they still wield great power.