11:51pm June 15, 2013

I dreamed about delirium and death for the first time in awhile.

I faced death in two different dreams last night. It felt as real as it does in real life, when I am confronted by my own mortality.

In one of them, I was living with my parents. Somewhere with no electricity and sporadic running water. I had a disease, it was never named in the dream. And the beginning of the end was when you became not just incontinent, but unable to feel that you had had an accident.

That happened to me. And we all knew what it meant. My mom held me while we cried.

And then I remember desperately wanting to contact Anne, but being unable to. Hoping she would sense what was happening anyway. Because I went too fast into the realm of delirium and negative spoons, where letter writing becomes impossible. My last coherent thought before the delirium hit was wishing Anne was there in person.

In a different dream, I didn’t die. But I almost did. I was a boy. I would call it a boy. In his late teens. He was a figure in mythology. Not real mythology but the legends of a culture in the dream. Half the time I was watching him, half the time I was him. His name was Pu. At the time this happened, I was him.

I was walking down a hallway with a number of old, balding men. We knew we were in danger. And suddenly I was hit by a poisoned dart, and began to sway. It was a deadly poison. There was an antidote, but it was not completely effective every time.

One of the men caught me as I fell, the other jabbed me with something sharp containing the antidote. I remember, before I passed out, wishing on the one hand that I could live. But on the other hand, that if I died, nothing terrible would happen to me afterwards.

I survived, but not before a fever and delirium that lasted months. I remember feeling like I was becoming a wildcat, running and running, crossed with a man, cycling back and forth between anatomically cat and anatomically man and something in between. And a whole lot of other strange things. Before I recovered, and the dream continued.

Both of those are very realistic in terms of ways I’ve reacted to life threatening situations. Wishing Anne was there is one of my few wishes for myself rather than others, of things I could do before I die. And in emergency medical situations where I am rapidly losing the ability to write letters, wishing I had written when I had the chance… very common.

And that thing that happens where I go from hoping I don’t die to making peace with death in a split second? That happens to me in the sort of emergencies where you realize fast that nothing that happens to your health is in your control anymore. Where you know it could go either way and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s almost a relief to let go and allow your body to work, or not work, as the case may be.

I don’t know why my dreams last night were so full of realistic delirium. Maybe my body is still unsettled at the sensation of having my stomach fluids steadily sucked out of me by this accordion bag. Often it is something physical that causes dreams like that when I have them.

But it was strange to face death twice in such a realistic fashion, and to die once but live the other time. Maybe my mind is still working through all these recent medical experiences. Trying to figure out how to face death and how to face life.

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