ghost of the past

I remembered out of nowhere a dream I had in 2015/16.

I was led by my mum to a chair. The chair's was faced away from a wall. I sat on the chair and said out load: "I want to kill myself " (in English, which is a bit weird as I always dream in Swedish).

And after I had plead for death the wall opened and the chair dropped me inside the wall, where there was a gas chamber, a chamber with cyanide gas.

I knew I was going to die, so I took a few deep breaths and awaited death. I woke up when I died in the dream.

So, yeah, it was a solemn dream. It wasn't a nightmare at all, it was just the way it was. I was calm in the dream and I was calm when I woke up, a bit sad maybe, but calm.

I actually talked about the dream later that day when I was at theatre school. A girl, who was fifteen at that time looked at me in horror and gasped: "What kind of books do you read to make you dream like that?"

Ah, such young naivety.

I smiled at her and told her about a book I had read where one of the characters died by suicide. She'd gassed herself in the car.

The girl said I shouldn't read such books if I get nightmares from them.

If only she'd known that I've spent a good time of my life to actively think about such horrible things, if not for myself then for art. I'm suprised that she didn't make a connection, I mean, she knew what kinds of ideas I had. Maybe she was just so oblivious.

I have realized that if one person doesn't have experience with mental health issues, they have a reaaally hard time imagining that other people experience stuff as pain in a whole other way than them.

I've read at my job an analysis of a song lyric by a 17-year old. The song was about a broken family, hate and despair which the youth experienced in said family. The student wrote: "This song must be based of true events, as no one could ever come up with this messed up song themselves".

I was taken aback. How could this person think that it's impossible to imagine horror? What?? Why? I wrote in the feedback that they can't write such comments in an analysis.

But maybe it's true. You can't imagine hate if you haven't experienced it yourself.