The Voice in the Room

I’ve been writing in a dream journal for a while now, and how it reflects my frustrations and my past. The details change.

• Sometimes it’s a witch that won’t stay dead.
• Sometimes it’s a city I’ve forgotten but somehow still know.
• Sometimes it’s a hidden universe behind a door in my childhood bedroom.
• This week it was a fungus growing inside the walls of that room.

The walls bulged with it. Something poisonous. Something spreading underneath the surface. My brother already knew about it. When I challenged him, he tore part of it off and threw it at me.

I ended up contaminated by it.

Then, just as I was trying to get clean, metal clamps reached out from the room and tried to drag me back inside.

I woke up angry, not frightened.

Angry, fucking angry!!

Because lately I’ve started to realise something.

The details of the dreams change, but the message rarely does.

• Stay where you are.
• Don’t take risks.
• Don’t meet people.
• Don’t trust anyone.
• Don’t try.
• Don’t leave the room.
• And if all else fails, just give up.

I’ve also been noticing something else recently.

Every now and then, usually when I’m tired, anxious, lonely or feeling particularly vulnerable, a thought drops into my head.

“You’d be better off dead.”

• Not as a plan.
• Not as a desire.
• Not as something I want.
• Just a thought.

A drive-by comment from a voice that seems to have impeccable timing.

• It never appears when things are going well.
• It doesn’t show up when I’m laughing with friends.
• It doesn’t appear when I’m excited about something.
• It waits.

Then it arrives right when I’m already struggling.

I’ve started to realise that the voice, the dreams and the fear are all saying roughly the same thing.

• Stop.
• Withdraw.
• Retreat.
• Give up.
• And honestly, I’m getting pretty pissed off with it.

Because I know what happens when I listen.

• My world gets smaller.
• The relief lasts for a few hours, maybe a day.
• Then the disappointment arrives.
• Then the sadness.
• Then the frustration.
• Then I find myself wondering why I keep ending up back in the same place.
• The really unfair part is that none of this feels like a choice.

So much of it was decided by things that happened years ago.

• Bad actors.
• Bad experiences.
• Loss.

Things that shaped the way my mind reacts long before I understood what was happening.

Sometimes I look at other people and wonder what it’s like to simply decide to do something and then do it.

• No negotiations.
• No internal debates.
• No fear.
• Just action.

I’m fifty years old and some days that feels impossibly far away. But despite all of that, I’ve noticed something. The voice still turns up. The fear still turns up. The dreams still turn up. And yet, despite them, I’m still planning.

• Still thinking about returning to work.
• Still trying to meet people.
• Still trying to build friendships.
• Still trying to live.

The room keeps trying to pull me back. The difference is that these days I’m starting to pull back. Not because I’m fearless. Not because I’m cured. But because I’m beginning to suspect that the voice in the room isn’t actually trying to protect me anymore.

It’s just trying to keep me where it already understands the map. And I’m not sure I want to stay there forever.