That Dream Again

My therapist is Dr. Weiss, a white lady who speaks permanently half a beat slow, with a fiddle-leaf fig in her office that is permanently half dead. The company benefits package covers twenty sessions a year — use it or lose it. That was my official reason for booking her. The real reason was the dream.

"Still the same one?" she asked.

"Still the same one," I said. "Grey sea, very flat. A lot of wind. A row of low houses on the shore, red roofs. And flowers — small white flowers, a whole field of them. I'm standing in the field, barefoot."

"And what does standing in it feel like?"

I thought about it. "Like coming home."

"But you told me your hometown has no sea."

"Correct," I said. "Hangzhou has no sea. Nobody in my family even swims."

Dr. Weiss wrote something down. "When did this dream start?"

"When I was little. I can't pin it down. Before I learned English, anyway."

She asked about my family. I gave her the usual: only child, strict mother, father of few words. And then halfway through, for no reason I could name, I said a thing I had never said to anyone:

"Actually, on my dad's side, everyone dreams deep. My grandfather too. Those people — when they dream, it's like they clock in somewhere else."

Dr. Weiss smiled and took that as a figure of speech. "The kind of recurring landscape dream you're describing is usually tied to chronic anxiety. High-pressure environment, the immigrant experience, intergenerational transmission from the family of origin — you were raised to be prepared for everything, so your brain rehearses a safe place while you sleep."

Rehearses. Nice word. I almost bought it.

"When did you last cry?" she asked suddenly.

That stopped me. I thought about it seriously. For a long time.

"I don't cry," I said finally. "Never have. My mom says I stopped at three. She's always treated it as a feature — brags about it to relatives."

"Do you think it's a feature?"

I looked at the half-dead fiddle-leaf fig and didn't answer. How do I put this — not crying isn't strength. Not crying is because I've always felt that the bad thing is still ahead, so the tears need to be saved. Like savings. You don't touch them. You keep them for the real thing.

What the real thing was, I didn't know. I'd just always been waiting for it.

Session over, she asked, as usual, whether I'd consider an SSRI. I said, as usual, let me think about it. Outside, the Bay Area sun was shining like it had no conscience, and standing in the parking lot I was hit by a sudden, specific wanting — to go somewhere. Where, I couldn't say. Just somewhere very far north, where the wind is strong.

Fine. Anxiety it is 😮‍💨 At least my anxiety has excellent scenery.

She said the dream was my brain rehearsing a safe place.

She got exactly one thing wrong — it wasn't rehearsing a safe place. It was rehearsing the big thing I'd been saving my tears for.