'Tis better to have dreamed and lost, than never to have dreamed at all.

When your dream dies

So many songs, poems and inspirational stories tell of “following your dreams” but I have yet to read one where the promise of a dream come true ends in the death of that same dream, until now.

I once had a dream while in high school, that I would one day have quiche for lunch on the Champs Elysees in France. I didn't know how I would get there. That wasn't part of the dream; or my goal. My goal was to “have quiche on the Champs Elysees”. Simple. When I was 36 years old; I went on a missions trip to France; flew into and out of Paris and the night before I returned to the U.S...I took myself on the Metro and made my dream come true. Oh, it was not the sunny seat on the cobble stoned cafe sidewalk lunch that I had dreamed of; it was a late dinner, inside the cafe restaurant on a gloomy, misty early evening; the kind of rain that everyone says makes Paris look mysterious and even more beautiful. My dream came true; not exactly in the way that I had envisioned but exactly as I had stated.

I dreamed of returning to my first love. To see him once again. To love him and be loved by him and the hope of passionately embracing, kissing and celebrating the return of our lost love...and I saw my dream come true. Hilariously happy, we reunited. Joyfully and enthusiastically “in love”, we relived the beautiful moments, shared the “filler” that had been in our lives for 25 years while we were separated and thought that we had LOVE like no other couple. We even felt sorry for those who had “far less” love than we did. We planned on making our dream come true an happily ever after...until mental illness insidiously revealed itself; the killer of dreams.

Just imagine for moment. You have dreamt and longed to be with someone whom you had loved all your life, and returned to them with “only the clothes on your back” because property and possessions meant nothing compared to love, and have your dream come true only to turn into a NIGHTMARE within 6 months. You are stuck. You have given up means to support yourself, insurance and security. You love him. You want to see him be healthy and happy; hopefully with you. You know he is ill but you KNOW that you do not want to live the remainder of your life with his continual, fervent denial of “any problem” and blaming YOU for the misery that he feels. Rages, hurtful words, anger. That is when I started to read online that I was not alone.I found a forum that explained Personality Disorders for those of us who might have found ourselves loving a person with this mental illness. I realized I loved a mentally ill man.

As if I was experienced a foreshadowing, I circumvented information about BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder since I obviously did not know anyone who suffered from that insidious disease, or I hadn't until 6 months after reuniting with my first love, it was then that I realized that I did know someone. I loved someone and I lived with someone who suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder. I didn't want to believe how deeply dark and painful it was for the sufferer or their loved ones; I clung to the hope that “with DBT therapy there was a promising prognosis of living an healthy and happy life”. But that is only offered to those who suffer with mental illness who will accept and acknowledge their pain and face their emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, rages, black and white thinking (splitting), projection, fear of abandonment and fear of intimacy and so many other very notable and outstanding symptoms of mental illness.

My dream certainly came true. It was wonderful; for a short time. Our love was real and it was the best love that we had ever had known. It was also the rearing of the head of mental illness; that had happened so many years ago, returning to turn our dream come true into a nightmare. Nonetheless, our dream came true and then it died. It is better, even yet, to have a dream come true and turn into a nightmare, than never to have had your heartfelt dream come true at all. I am glad that my dream came true. 

I still believe in dreams. 

Accepting life as it comes

When we are pushed to the edge our our ability, resourcefulness and physical endurance; we have to sometimes stop trying to “make things right” and accept that life will go on; whether we like it or not. We feel helpless. We feel that we fail ourselves and others. We feel alone and confused yet we ask ourselves “What can I do?”. Sometimes, the answer to that may be “nothing” while most of the time, it just may be “more than I could have ever imagined”.

I remember feeling at a loss; grieving for a loved one whom I could not care for: my mother, my stillborn child, several friends whom I would have preferred to “be with” at the end of their lives; in hopes that I could do something to make a difference in their lives like they had made in mine. I remember feeling a sense of obligation; I wanted to be there for them. I wanted to hold their hand and comfort them at their hardest moments. I wanted to be a blessing to them and share my gratitude to how they affected my life; how much difference they made in the world; and in mine.

• Sometimes we “just can’t do” the thing that we would like most to do. 

• We would like to “be strong” when others are weak and most of the time, we feel weak as well. 

• Sometimes we would like to “be happy” when we sense negativity, but then again, for some reason, we get caught up in the same moodiness and can’t seem to “put on a happy face”. 

• Sometimes we would like to be wise and have the answers that others ask for but really do not want to hear.

• We struggle in sharing our experience and only hope that they would take from our example, that it is better to “get messy and make mistakes” as long as we are being true to ourselves more than anything else.

Accepting that we have a great need to "find ourselves, heal from abuse and learn to dream again" is the BEST thing for us to accept; let's start there. 

We are worth it!!!