Every time I lift weights, my personal trainer tells me I’ve achieved a new personal best. Sometimes I’ve achieved four new personal bests!! Some days I’m sure he’s lying, that I've actually regressed back to a helpless blob flailing around in the womb. But that felt terrible, I say.
It only felt terrible because I pushed you harder, he says. And I think, Now isn’t that just like life. No matter how shitty it feels we’re basically on an upward trajectory no matter how many pot holes, switchbacks, dreams of despair and death.
I’ve been doing really well lately, but last Saturday was one of those nights where the intensity of my dreamworld surpassed the credibility of reality. Stan committed suicide while we were on vacation in a foreign country. It was the day after Valentine's Day and I had to make arrangements to fly his body encased in a black casket back to the U.S. By far the worst part of the dream was delivering the news to our family. His mother, his sister, our son.
The dream was so vivid and hyperreal, it crashed around inside of me long after it was done. I cried so hard my husband thought I'd woken up and our dog was dead. He held me until I sort of calmed down, until I could breathe, until I made him promise that he would never, ever leave us like that. But what kind of promise can he make when death is sure to arrive no matter which way it comes? In class recently a student shared that as her mother lay dying, she and her siblings took a firm position against death. Is that a position we can take??
A few hours after the dream, I realized that the day before I’d forgotten to take my meds. The dream, I felt certain, was both a side effect of withdrawal and a tiny glimpse into my untreated head. There are thick tangled threads of mental illness and addiction in my family that run through the fabric of my flesh. But maybe I’m still setting a new personal best even when it feels as bad as it can get. Some days I feel strong, happy, vibrant. Some days I want to open the door to the darkness that's been knocking and invite it back in.