When Dreams are Calling Read Online Free Page B

when
food had no
flavor and each morning I could feel a cold sweat down my spine, I knew
I was
depressed.
    There are many ways in which you can go about a
depression.
    Usually, you start by a fairly comprehensive
analysis of its roots.
    So, what was it? Was I too sensitive, reading
too much poetry, too
much Freud, too much psychology? Hardly, as I was always excited and
happy with
all of these activities.
    Were my sex hormones going cuckoo? Did I need
some therapeutic sex
sessions ? If that was so, everyone will want to be depressed
and cured,
then cured and depressed and so on.
    Was it genetic? This one is always hard to say,
for the simple
reason that some people hide depression so well, that from the outside
they
look better than anyone else around. But, as far as I knew, from my ten
years old
sister to my ninety-five years great grandpa, everyone was in amazingly
good
health.
    Could I have blamed it on my parents, on their
rules and high expectations
 that were shutting the gates to my dreams like the guardian
shutting the door
of the prison cell, giving the one inside no option than to wait and
hope? Definitely
too much Freud.
    But, like with airplane crashes, it’s never
only one factor; it’s
always a combination. So, go figure.
    After the causes are covered and uncovered, you
move on to remedies,
the only thing that truly matters.
    Let’s take them one by one: reflexology. I
worked the toes, the
top of my feet, the arch of the feet, the inside and outside of them,
day and
night, hard, then harder, then even harder, following a simple
principle: more
pain outside, less pain inside. But all of my work was to no avail. At
the end
of each session, I had happy feet, but nothing else changed.
    Then, I went into astrological aromatherapy,
which tells which
essential oil suits you according to your sun sign. Sensuous,
mysterious,
erotic, uplifting, excellent for nervous tension, sandalwood was ideal
for me,
a true born Aquarius. Maybe the oil was not good, maybe I was not the
run-of-the-mill
Aquarius, whatever it was, it failed. At least I got to smell nice each
day.
    Homeopathy was another interesting option. For
mild depression,
anxiety and all those wonderful ailments, aconitum, the queen and the
king of
poisons, was the answer. But only in books. In reality, I was immune to
it.
    During all these experiments and thinking and
brooding, I’ve learned
a few things. For example, depression is a controlling, selfish,
manipulating
beast, craving attention. And whenever my attention was waning, her
grip on me
was becoming weaker too. Like any predator, depression was not praying
on the
strongest, but on the weakest.
    Then, depression let me get plenty of rest. In
fact, that’s all I
wanted to do and all I did: rest. I rested my body and troubled my mind.
    I was also in the position to fully argue that
talk is not cheap.
Quite the contrary, talk can be terribly expensive. And the first visit
to the
psychiatrist proved the point. In fact, it did it so well, that I was
forced to
consider not going back for the second session.
    And one last important bit: suddenly I had some
peace and quiet.
People treated me like I’d had some kind of contagious disease and gave
me plenty
of space.
    But, besides those small perks, living with
depression, or more
accurately simply existing, was not fun.
    I was scared I’d never have a husband, a job, a
family and no one
would ever want me.
    I was terrified something was terribly wrong
with me and that I was
different for all the wrong reasons.
    Many times  I wondered why it had to happen
to me, why God, out of all people, chose to punish me . Was it a test? If it was, I was failing
it
completely. Was it some kind of sign? If it was, I was not getting it.
Maybe I
had to have patience, to wait. But since when waiting gets us anywhere?
    But, I enjoyed lamenting about it. It was the
only thing left for me
to do. And I did it, day after day until my mom, got tired of it:
    “So many others would