The past several weeks have been a collision of dreams: a confluence of conflicting passions derived from the abandonment of one set of expectations and the establishment of another. I used to dream and plan of a life with a certain someone, retiring on one of the lakes in the northern midwest, traveling the world as our children grew into adulthood and perhaps only coming back to visit whenever they had children of their own that we could dote upon. I used to dream of simple things: gardening and taking walks along trails across the prairie, watching thunderstorms roll past across the setting sun. These were quiet, precious dreams that I used to claim would define me in my retirement, and motivate the twilight of this incarnation. But these were dreams which I knew betrayed the spirit shut away within me: the longing for release, the desire to ride the winds of those storms and take pieces of those sunsets with me to my grave.
For more than a decade, I had resigned myself to those first dreams I’ve described. They had a certain appeal, after all, just not the type of appeal I’d have recognized as a younger man. I chalked up my resignation to those dreams as a function of my maturation. In the world into which I had committed myself in marriage, the example was to grow older with a calm, ever decreasing desire for risk. Life was destined to grow increasingly more stable, predictable, uneventful—that false sense of security that so many fall for in their later years. It was a conscious decision to look at life this way, or a series of conscious decisions. At the time I made them, security was something I felt I needed, and “knew” was something I “deserved.” I wanted to end my solace, or so I told myself. Convinced myself. For although I possessed them, used them, made them feel like my own, those dreams of a quiet egress from life were never truly the desire of my heart.
Over a decade ago, when I was but a handful of years into this marriage, I began to realize the internal inconsistency to which I had limited myself by taking those dreams into myself. I tried to ignore the realization, tried to stifle it in the presumed interest of my need to “mature.” That never really worked, but after several attempts I became so adept that the act of swallowing the uneasiness, and even the displeasure, began to pass virtually unnoticed.
Emphasis on “virtually.”
Years later, or just a few years ago (depending on how you wish to view it), I began having different dreams. A lot of flying dreams, if you wish to go totally Freudian on the subject, but also dreams which would leave my heart racing whenever I would wake, even when they couldn’t be remembered. I began seeing myself not old and quiet and resigned to my fate, but instead envisioned myself dismantling the walls of predictability with bloody fingers and screaming for the sheer joy of the effort. I visited places in my dreams I’d never seen before, met people whose origins were beyond my experience, and did things of which I’d never conceived, let alone conceived possible. One day, it struck me: I was dreaming like I had when I was young.
And the day I made that connection, I became wrapped in a melancholy which is only just now beginning to part and lift away like the deep, cold fog it had become.
Now, melancholy and I are old friends. We first got acquainted when I was in ministry school in Austin, Texas, and I realized that no amount of prayer, no amount of wishing, no amount of hoping, could save me from destroying myself if I was truly intent on doing so. God didn’t save me from myself; that’s one of the reasons why I left him back then. And what was left when I left Him was melancholy. There’s nothing like being woefully unprepared for life on your own (a topic for another day) and undertaking a course of actions that ultimately leave you entirely alone and bereft of any support, be it tangible or spiritual. At any rate, my relationship with melancholy grew from there over the years, until she and I ultimately became very familiar, for she has been a frequent and steady visitor over the years. I had never minded her visits before, but at the age of thirty-something, despite being comfortable with her, I suddenly found myself quite dissatisfied with her frequent appearances.
Ultimately, it was melancholy which drove me out of that situation. It took her a long time to convince me, even as dissatisfied as I was with her, because she’d only come by every once in a while, and the times between her visitations were happy enough. But each time she came, I hated her more, until I hated her so much that I couldn’t ignore the fact that I needed her out of my life. My dreams spoke of far better things than where I was at. They spoke of hope and passion that melancholy could never provide. And through it all, I realized that those old dreams of peacefulness and serenity were melancholy’s original footholds. It was the last time that melancholy came that I spoke to my wife about the changes that I needed. And she, being melancholy’s handmaiden, said no word against those changes, made no move to prevent or facilitate them.
So, I walked away.
And that’s the underlying story to that.