The past few months I have felt empty inside. Bipolar disorder can sometimes have this effect, where I feel hollowed out, numb, a little bit removed.

Not sad or depressed, just empty. I don’t have an appetite, I can’t write or get creative with anything. I have literally nothing to talk to you about.

I fall into my books to fill the long hours. Anything to distract, to prod, to try to spark an ember of real emotion.

Or just to pass the time until my real life comes wandering back.

But when this happens, I dream. I mean, I dream.

In my dreams there are real life dramas going on, real people that I engage with animatedly, with backdrops that are alarmingly realistic. Highly detailed plots – gripping and true to the bone. When I wake, I’m exhilirated.

It’s like my dream world is where I am doing all the real living.

I used to think that it was a sign that I was going on an uptick towards a more manic state. Like, the engine was revving. I was a little bit scared, did my meds need adjusting?

But I’ve learned that it’s a kind of engine light that indicates that I need to pay attention. Since my daytime hours are so dull, I need to listen up to the other half of my life.

It’s too bad that I can’t remember all of the amazing connections and ideas from my dreams – I try to. Last night I lay in bed and attempted to pick apart just one or two threads that I could write about. Because the ideas were so fresh and unique, or so they seemed at the time.

Could they be crumbs of some ideas that I could write about?

When my daughter was in high school, for psychology class, she studied something called lucid dreaming. That is, she would wake herself during a dream and write it down in a notebook by her bed, making it as detailed and vivid as she could.

Trying to get as close to being inside of a dream while you are awake. In other words, illuminating the darkness of the subconscious.

I thought about doing that last night, grabbing a pen, but I was afraid I’d never get back to sleep. Sleep is a sacred thing for mental health. Not enough and your brain chemistry goes haywire.

Maybe I am depressed during the day, but not at night. What if my dream and wake states are swapped, like inverted realities?

Maybe I am living a complete life in my rich, fantastical night stories, and I’m merely resting from them during the day.

Maybe my lucid star shines most bright at night.

It’s a little like eating an overripe pear – the unexpected juice drips under my palm, and I have to turn my head to catch the goodness from the other side.

I’ll take whatever side the sweetness drips down.

Maybe my dreams are the breath of life to resucitate a worn out soul. When everyday routines stall and seize up, maybe the dreams kick in and say hold on a minute, remember this?

Remember the taste of morning coffee with lots of milk?

Remember the bees that came out yesterday, even in winter, with clumped yellow pollen on their fuzzy back legs?

Remember the beautiful bookmark your daughter made you that marks and separates last night from tonight?

Maybe that lovingly crafted gift was the pollen to my hive, the little push that sent my dreams into space. My thoughts of her tucked between my pages.

These dreams might be a kick in the shins to say wake up, you forgot to breathe, to smell, to notice.

So today I breathe. I look around the familiar kitchen, and hold the steaming chipped cup of tea. Nothing new in any of it.

But behind my eyes I am flying. I am hugging and crying over my sister, I am laughing with my psychiatrist, I am talking to my mom, I am holding my son as a toddler, I am remembering someone I haven’t thought of in many years.

All of these things happened just last night. And it was in technicolor.

And now today, I am seeing how the same colors hold up in the daytime, and if I can bring back that feeling of flying, so effortless and natural, so free, so unafraid.

Lucid and real and worth remembering.

And so I grab a pen and write.

Cover art by LouLure:
"Nothing could stop her"