LeConte

Journal, Summer of 2002

July 26, 2002

Marge sits there casually, and we converse the same way I'd converse with a close friend. She is always interested and involved. The difference is in what she says to me. How can she know me so well in so short a period of time? How does she make me know myself, so effortlessly, such that I wonder why I never thought up these explanations before?

She asked me to recount my earliest dream. I told her about the series of recurring dreams called Highway in the Sky. I had these dreams repeatedly during my early childhood. The circumstances of the dream changed, but the essential elements remained the same.

The dream began with Mom putting Denise and me into the car. I was no older than seven. We two children would sit in the back seat, and Mom would start driving. The dream proceeded exactly the same, every time. As Mom drove, picking up speed and covering distance, the road became progressively more narrow, and then left the ground altogether, angling, twisting, climbing steeply and becoming so narrow that the car began to tilt from side to side with the momentum of every turn. As the curves became steeper and more acute, the car increased its speed. At first, I was not scared, because Mom was driving, and I liked riding in the car. Our speed continued to increase, and the road continued upward, until I could no longer see the ground below.

At this point in the dream, I always started to get worried. When I realized we were in imminent danger of plunging off into an abyss of blue sky, I leaned forward to get reassurance from my mom. I was horrified to discover she was no longer in the driver's seat. In fact, she was no longer in the car at all! My sister and I were hurtling through the heavens unguided, encased in a car that could not be contained on such a roller coaster of celestial highway. With the velocity increasing, and the curves becoming tighter and steeper, the car would naturally sail right off the road and begin a free fall to the unseen earth below. At this point, just as the car tipped forward into its fall, I always woke up terrified.

Marge told me that one's earliest dreams are often predictive of the course of one's life. I saw the correlation immediately, but I was not quite on the same track as she. Since we had just talked about Progoff's Intensive Journal, she was thinking in terms of Jung's theories, and said so. I don't know anything about Jung, so she told me the interpretation.

Evidently, I have a lot of "female energy" that is unbalanced by "male energy". This excess of female energy is at once the source of my creativity and my inability to achieve "wholeness." The result is my unhappiness, my poor choices of men, my distaste for work and my constant tearing down of whatever I start to build.

We talked a little about my cycles of beginnings and endings. I expressed frustration at the fact that I am constantly at beginnings. I begin new lives quite easily, but by the time they are halfway formed, I tear them down, because they always end up like the Leaning Tower of Pisa -- lopsided, and I can't stand upright in them.

The foundations are rotten, and I never know it until the end result reveals the flaw.

Sometimes I try to continue anyway, and say it doesn't matter, but it always matters; and in the end I tear everything down, crying and burning my bridges behind me. I am left with rubble, and I grope around for salvageable pieces with which to start building again. My consistent mistake is that I do not find firmer ground, because I cannot bear the search. I am compelled to start building all over again as soon as possible, and I often pick up some of the malformed pieces that have exacerbated previous instabilities.

The dream sequence illustrates some key characteristics of my life. First, I start out well grounded, on the ground, so to speak, but the road starts twisting and lifting off the ground. Still, there is no cause for alarm. If I keep going, the road ascends into the sky, and it becomes narrow, tipping and twisting and careening. My car cannot stay on it, and I fall off. Just like in my life, I cannot stay on my course, because it becomes too turbulent, and my vehicle cannot hold the track. I have chosen the wrong vehicle for this type of road, or the wrong road for my vehicle, or both.

July 27, 2002

The court postponed the divorce hearing two weeks, from July 29 to Aug. 14. This is like a fatal illness. Just when you think the end is near, the body rallies, and you get a temporary remission. All the while, you know that health will never return. Death is the imminent end. You even want it, just to break the deadlock between contentment and annihilation.

The euphoria of the journal workshop stayed with me all week. Only yesterday, during my visit with Dr. Rohr, did I start to come down.

Dr. Rohr is an interesting psychiatrist. Unlike Dr. Casper, he is not the least bit interested in my life's events, but he is vitally concerned that I not be depressed. He spent the whole session talking about medication. I am happy to have been directed to him, because I do need the medication, and I don't really want him digging around in my life. I've got Marge for that, and the two functions really are separate, though related.

His sobering comment was, "With a history of three depressive episodes for which you have been medicated, the question is not IF there will be a fourth, but WHEN."

March 29, 2003

Today I had my last session with Marge. She's leaving for Japan next week; she got a job with the government, and won't be back for two years. I'll miss her, but I no longer need her. We both agreed to that today. I am stable now, functional, and well on my way to a new life, whether I like it or not.

I told her about my recent dream, which I recognize as a variation of Highway in the Sky. In the dream, I was driving my car east on a well-known busy street that I travel every day. At first, the steering wheel felt difficult to hold, because it was much smaller in diameter than usual. Then, the dashboard extended itself over the steering wheel, so I had to maneuver the car using the tiny steering wheel underneath the overgrown dashboard. None of this seemed unusual, just a little frustrating. A male passenger sat passively next to me, though I don't know his identity.

As I drove, the street became bumpy. Potholes opened up in front of me, and I had to turn suddenly so I wouldn't fall into them. Large bumps appeared, and I had to brake in order not to hit the underside of my car. As I drove, avoiding the difficulties, the road became more and more unmanageable. It started to twist. Then, crevasses appeared, getting larger as I drove along. I did not know my destination, but I knew I was going somewhere. Suddenly, I came upon a huge crevasse, and half of my car bridged it, but the other half did not. Wheels and chassis remained underneath me. Doors and various tubes stayed to my left while more doors and tubes extended to the right. I knew I'd have to transfer the car piecemeal over this crevasse, but I was stuck. I couldn't proceed, nor could I retreat. I was stuck on a precipice sitting in a shell of a car, with its parts on either side of me, across a gulf. The dream ended.

Marge said, "Is that how your life feels now? Have you driven too far, and cannot put the pieces back together again?"

Of course, but the interesting thing is this: In the childhood version, I was helpless and terrified as I plunged off the highway in the sky down into oblivion. In this updated version, I stay on the ground, I do not give up the steering wheel, I do not get terrified, and I end the dream simply perplexed, wondering how I am going to put it all together again.