Briar Moon

 

Dr. Smalley likes it when I come early. He says that it means that I’m engaged with the need to make smart and proactive choices about my mental health recovery. He also likes when I write in my journal because he says that journaling is one tangible way of working on that recovery. 

Today, I arrived before he even got to his office and it was a little frustrating that he wasn’t there yet, but he said hello and went inside and I waited on the porch until he came to get me. Dr. Smalley is a nice man, but he doesn’t like when I break the unspoken boundaries of our professional relationship, but I don’t really have anyone else to talk to about this, so he’s the only person I can trust. The hypnosis sessions are helping, too.

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‘Have you been having dreams again?’ Dr. Smalley is a small man, sitting in an overstuffed leather chair and he is not writing like they do on TV. He’s just listening. I am facing him and I can see through the big picture window behind him into his small garden surrounded by a tall green hedge. There is a dogwood tree with one of those little green cages with suet in it for the cardinals. I like to watch them flit around while we talk. Dr. Smalley says it is okay for me to use that view to help me talk.

‘Yes.’

‘Are they the same as the ones you were having before or are these different?’

We always start with dream talk. It’s just how things go. Sometimes I don’t have any dreams, or, none that I can remember, but when I do have them, he likes to know.

‘This one is different, but also, a little the same.’

‘Tell me, if you want to.’

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I am walking in the woods. It is early Autumn and the trees are just starting to lose their deep summer green. To my left, I can see a line of electric barbed-wire fence and beyond that, green and muddy grass, like a field for livestock. Ahead, the woods stretch on into mist. To my right, the ground rises toward a ridge and there is a standing stone with a pattern etched or carved into it. All around the base of that stone, which is tall, are coiling briars. They are slowly moving, roiling and undulating and the thorns are long and sharp. On top of the standing stone is the moon. Not like it appears in real life, like a white light, round and rough in the sky. No, the moon is balanced on top of that standing stone and there is blood dripping from the top of it and the moon is turning red and I know that I have to walk toward it and climb up there and I have to go through those thorns to get the moon. 

I look down and I notice that I’m not wearing any clothing at all and that my skin is already being scratched and pricked by the briars and I’m not feeling it, but it is happening and I suddenly feel different, like my skin is impervious and I move toward the stone, through the briars and I reach up to the moon and it starts to spin and as it does, I notice that it is fading or falling away into dust and by the time I get to the stone and start to try to climb, the moon is gone and I have to get back through the briars and thorns and I start to wail and cry and then I wake ...’

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‘... up and that’s all I remember.’

‘What does that dream make you think of?’

I don’t want to say. Dr. Smalley is smart and he always seems to have an answer for me, but sometimes he makes me feel stupid. I wish he would just tell me. I wish he wouldn’t just assume that I know.

‘I watched a thing about the moon last week. Maybe ...’

‘I think you probably have a sense of what this is about, don’t you?’

‘I guess,’ I say to him and I know that I’m being difficult, but I feel so stupid. I want him to just tell me. It makes me so angry when he plays with me like this.

‘Do you remember what we spoke about last month when you were having these dreams before?’

‘I think so,’ I say.

‘What did we arrive at, do you remember?’

‘Dreams are ... uh ... symbolisms.’

‘Symbolic, yes. Dreams are symbolic and they represent real life but they do it figuratively, like some poets do. They make you have an image in your mind. Your dream is the image and the things in the dream are your subconscious trying to get you to see something that you don’t or won’t or cannot see.’

‘Yes.’

‘So what does this dream want to tell you? Break it down if you have to.’

‘I don’t really know.’

‘Just try. No wrong answers!’

‘The woods are my desire for peace and privacy and the rock and the briars are like an obstacle or something and the moon is what I’m trying to get at. When it dissolves it means that life is full of disappointment.’

‘That’s an interesting first guess, but let’s take it a bit further.’

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Dr. Smalley wants me to do these exercises before bedtime every night. I have to focus on the things I think I learned that day and make a list of the things I need to be better about tomorrow. I like to write in my journal, so I make these lists there, so I can keep up with it all. I need to learn a lot of things. I need to learn why I have scratches all over my legs and back and arms, like I really walked through the briars. I need to learn why I am so tired today and why I feel as though there is a heavy burden in my heart. I need to learn why I woke up in my backyard with no clothes on and why I was covered in blood. 

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‘The woods do represent your desire for things to be the way that they used to be,’ he says. ‘They show up a lot in your dreams and you’re always in the woods, but close to civilization, but just outside of it, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think that means that you feel like a person who is a bit of an outcast like you don’t fit in with your peers. What do you think?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. The standing stone represents an idol. It is something that you admire or desire, but you cannot get to it, because the briars have thorns. What do the thorns mean to you?’

‘They are my fear?’

‘They represent your anxiety. And your nudity in the dream?’

‘That’s my sense of vulnerability? My shyness?’

‘Very good.’

‘But what about the moon, though?’

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I can see it very clearly, even now. The moon on top of that standing stone is like a white-hot drop of molten steel in my heart. I don’t just go to it. It pulls me. It pulls me with its gravity, its magnetism. My blood is a tide and the moon pulls it and me to itself and it pulls something out of me that glows in that searing light. It pulls the thing that dwells in me out, and ...

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‘Today is a full moon, by the way,’ Dr. Smalley says with a smile. I suddenly don’t feel well.

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‘Let’s try hypnosis again, okay?’ This is the part of the session that I like because I don’t feel anxious when Dr. Smalley puts me under. I like the feeling of being aware and not being aware, too. His voice is soothing and ...

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‘ ... get to one, you will hear me and answer ...’

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There is something here with me in the darkness.

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Are you there?

Can you hear me? 

Yes.

Where are you?

I am here. 

What do you see?

I see the world as it should be.

What does that mean?

I see the world as it should be.

What does that look like to you?

Wild.

Wild how?

Forests and rivers and trees and rocks and ...

And?

The moon.

What about it?

It is everything.

Tell me.

I cannot.

Show me.

Yes.

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The thing with me in the darkness moves and I follow it.

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I hear the screaming and I come to and I realize what is happening. I see the truth of it. The voice in my head and the dreams. They aren’t analogies or metaphors. They are literal. They are all. It is the moon and it is calling to me. Calling to the true me. 

I look down at my hands and I see that they aren’t my hands, they are his. I am here and I can see, but I’m not looking through my own eyes, but his. This is his time. I look down at Dr. Smalley and I see fear on his face, but it is frozen there because his time is now over. He wasn’t ready for what he called out of me. It’s too bad. He was a nice man. His body slumps to one side like a boned fish. 

Just over the rim of the hedge, I can see the moon. The moon. It is calling me, pulling me. Dragging me. Dragging us.

Thank you Dr. Smalley, I say. Thank you. I am free.

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It is calling us and we must go to it. The chill air sings in my nose and I smell prey.