The strange dreams have returned.

Actually, they really never left. They are only getting more bizarre. It started with me seeing some dirt on my bathroom towels earlier in the evening. I was moderately annoyed, because my kids know not to touch the "for show" towels. This is not like me, outside my dreams, because I am probably the loosest mother ever to live when it comes to making messes.

"That's what God made washing machines for," I usually say. It never fails to make my kids smile. They know some of the other friends get torched for things like that.

Anyway, for some reason, I took my towels over to my friend Dawn's house. I have never been to Dawn's new house. I was playing with her son while I was washing my towels there. In reality, as far as I know, she didn't have a washing machine. No matter, it's my fucked up dream. Anyway, Dawn left the house. I was watching her son for her. Someone kicked in the door and marched my children into the house. They were beaten up terribly. I freaked the hell out and started to scream at the menacing lunatics who shoved my children into the house. I got a rifle smashed into my cheekbone (my right cheekbone, that I broke when I was 17. I am very sensitive about my face because of that incident). Suddenly, my ex-boyfriend Anthony's niece, (Cassie - see posts about her below) appeared. She told me she would help me get the kids out of there. She grabbed my towels out of the washing machine (there's those damn towels again!) and helped lead my out of the house. I said, but my kids! I have to get my kids! She said, no, come back for them. I said, I can't! A flood started in the bathroom. Cassie threw the towels onto them. My husband suddenly appeared and was mopping up the floor. He said to me, leave now, I'll get the kids.

I ran with Cassie. We got about a block away. I heard gunshots. I ran back. There was no one there in the house. My husband was gone. My children were gone. There were no bodies, despite the gunshots...but the towels my husband was using to clean the bathroom were soaked in blood. Dawn came home. She asked me where her son was. I told her I didn't know. She threw her keys down on the table and went into her room, leaving me standing there alone.

I woke up.

This is actually one of the least violent dreams I have been having lately. I try to pick it apart for metaphorical meanings. I can only get that the dirt on the towels must have subconsciously bothered me. I can't imagine why. And, my husband mopping up the floor? Typical. He's always cleaning up my messes...and I don't mean that literally, but rather, figuratively. Whenever I screw up, he's always there, saving me and the kids.

"I will be your father figure, I will be the one who loves you, til the end of time."

See? George Michael again. Unbearably relatable.

Anyway, I suppose the point I am trying to make here is these dreams are very disturbing to me. They stress me out, because I am normally not a person who remembers her dreams. I tend to either have dreamless sleep, or I have barely any recollection of them at all. On the rare times I do dream, they tend to be nightmares like the one above...but they are generally so violent that I have full recall. But again, they are rare. Now, it seems like they accompany any sleep I attempt. It makes me want to stay awake, not close my eyes. The sleep is longer now than it has been in the past, but are littered with these morose and morbid thoughts.

I am not as plagued by my insomnia, but this is worse. Much worse. I am getting more sleep so the manic phases are lessening. Good news. But, the sleep is so fitful and uncomfortable that it tosses me into a deeper hole of depression.

Which is the lesser of the two evils? I'm not sure.

I am wondering though...seeing things that aren't there. Hearing things that aren't there. Feeling things that aren't there. The full recollections. The nightmares so real, that I have to go touch my towels, check on my children or phone a friend to see if they are alright. They baffle me. Confuse me and make me feel desperate.

Am I falling into something worse than depression? IS there something worse than depression?

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2 minute later edit: Of course there is something worse than depression. My son had open heart surgery when he was a year old. I lost my other son, his brother, stillborn. My father has just had his second open heart surgery. My husband almost died of a pulmonary embolism three years ago. I failed miserably at a suicide attempt a few years prior to that. My best friend in the entire world died of AIDS three years ago. I was beaten by an ex within an inch of my life in 1991. Wars have been waged. Children died during the Oklahoma City Bombing while I was carrying my boys, safely in my womb. September 11th brought the world to its knees. Legends and icons died. People go to sleep starving on the streets of every country in the world. Innocent animals are slaughtered daily because their owners weren't responsible enough to keep them safe or have them spayed/neutered. Can I give you a thousand more examples of things that happen every single day that is worse than my depression? Absolutely.

So what gives me the right to sit here, so self-absorbed, so deluded as to believe that my problems are the worst problems in the world?

"Whats' the point of pressing palms,
when children fade in mothers arms?
It's a cruel world, with so much to lose
and what we have to learn
we rarely choose.
So if it's God who took her son
He cannot be the one,
living in her mind.
Take care, my Love, she says.
Don't think that God is dead.
Take care, my Love she said.
You have been loved..."

I don't. They're not. But, at the time it happens...it is so isolating, so devastating that you can actually believe you are all alone in this world.

Desperate. It's the desperation that makes you believe no one else is suffering right alongside you.

You're never alone. It just feels as though you are.