The Brightest Star in a Constellation

55: Dear Peter of the Future, Let Me Know

CW: Mention of suicide

☽ Peter ☽

I sit in Suzanna's office with candy wrappers strewn around me. She's left me alone for five minutes while I complete a self-assessment of my mental health.

It's a double-sided paper asking me to rate my feelings in the last few weeks. Do you feel that your typical hobbies are impacted? Do you feel that your typical relationships, including those you live with, are impacted? Are you looking forward to the future?

I answer these questions every two weeks, and yet, it doesn't get any easier.

And that last question—the future has been the only thing on my mind lately. It's all-encompassing; the future means this routine is going to be thrown off-kilter. And I don't like change. It's an equation with too many variables.

When I'm finished filling out the sheet, Suzanna enters the room. She looks over the assessment, sliding the sheet underneath her notepad. "How is the sertraline?"

For the sake of answering the question, I say, "Fine." Then, quieter, I add, "I did some research on its effect on dreams. I was pretty tired this morning."

"Really? About what?"

I shrug. I can barely remember the events of my dreams, but when I have them, I know they're vivid.

On Sunday, after I'd come back from the lake house, I woke up. It was probably about seven—the numbers on my phone's clock were blurred and unreadable. I climbed out of bed, tucked in the sheets, and got halfway through brushing my teeth before—with a jolt—I realized it was a dream. I was dreaming about being awake. And the cycle kept restarting, over and over, until I finally jolted into awareness, for real, unable to shake the feeling of unease that crawled through me.

I determined it was called a false awakening, which led me down a separate article, and so forth, until I found the connection.

Suzanna's pencil scratches against the notepad as she writes. "You know, from my perspective, it seems to be helping. The self-assessment shows that you're managing. It looks like there are still a few things that... that we should keep working on."

I don't speak for a moment, but Suzanna doesn't mind. I nod.

"Like those skills, we're practicing. I've noticed a lot of it is related to social skills, and that's fine. All of it isn't about anxiety. I mean, it was exacerbated by it, but it isn't the cause. A lot of mental illnesses go hand-in-hand. Feeling nervous all the time can bring out other feelings, like sadness or overstimulation," she says. "I have to ask you this question as soon as it comes to me, okay? I know it's sensitive. Are you having suicidal thoughts? Do you think sometimes that life would be better—that it would be easier—if you weren't here?"

I exhale, digging my fingertips into the palm of my hand. "No."

Suzanna considers this, flipping to the assessment and humming to herself. "To be blunt with you, I think there's a through-line here. Are you still feeling anxious about little things... for example, do you think a lot about making eye contact?"

I nod silently.

"If you know, and you feel like telling me, what is it in specific? Are you anxious because you're thinking about the person judging you, or does it seem painful to look at someone like that?"