Objectification

I had another tsunami dream.

I was in some resort with my family. My brothers and I were exploring the place as my parents were sleeping in our room. For some reason, the resort was deserted, but I didn't feel scared. It didn't even feel weird. My brothers and I went down to the pool area but found it boring, so we went to the gate that fronted the sea.

The waves were huge, like buildings—but calm. The water was a deep blue, almost like it had been dyed. The waves were constant and kept coming and coming, but there were no whitecaps. Just a calm onslaught, if such a thing were possible.

And then I woke up. And that was that.

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Before falling asleep last night, I remember telling myself, "Hmmm. I feel blue." Not sad, not angry; no intense feeling of anything, just...blue. I contemplated on whether or not to take my for-emergency-only medication, but I wasn't anxious, I wasn't panicking. I just felt—yeah—blue.

Sometimes I feel like my sense of calm is being poured on top of me, like water. It cascades from the top of my head and then the water makes a deliberate path down my body and then envelopes every inch of me in this thin, protective layer of moisture. For a while, everything is all right. The water cools me, calms me down. And the moisture stays.

After a while, when I feel the calm escape me bit by bit, the moisture becomes this thin layer, like plastic wrap. I don't know if this happens automatically or I somehow trigger this. It becomes a barrier of sorts. When things become more difficult to handle, the barrier thickens and thickens and thickens until...

...I am now in a glass case that's formed to fit my body exactly. I can still see through it and people can still see me, but it's getting harder to move. Getting harder to see. But I'm not panicking. I still know what's going on.

The next stage is akin to the shedding of old scales by reptiles. I can see that, at some point soon, a tiny crack shall appear in this glass case (either by my doing or some outside force) and that shall signal my eventual exposure.

It's a vicious cycle, but, as with all routines, it also gives me a sense of calm. For as long as that cycle continues to turn, I know I am still alive. Every click that indicates movement is a signal of another breath taken.

I can now somehow objectify myself, something I wasn't able to do when I was in the depths of my depression. I am able to sort of hover above myself and zoom in to the parts of me that are identifiable.

I am a weather station map. I see the storms that have left my area of responsibility, I see the ones that are coming. There are parts of me that are obscured by the claw-like wisps of the outer fringes of a storm.

I am a ticked box in a check list.

I am the hastily written marginalia on a book.

I am the un-highlighted portion of a heavily highlighted law textbook.

And that is that.

"And, where there is objectification, there cannot be participation, and without the availability of participation, there cannot be presence." - Jill Graper Hernandez on Gabriel Marcel