Not all who wander are lost: Or, maybe they are?! My latest crazy dream, which ends with an interrobang.

Ok all you psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, mind readers, tarot card readers and fortune cookie makers, here’s a doozy for you. Please let me know what you think my latest crazy dream means. And no, I’m not going to accept “you’re insane” as the answer. Here goes:

I was still in school, either high school or college, or I was an adult going back to school. I was in a class that was culminating in some kind of performance later that evening. I wasn’t in the performance, but I had an important behind-the-scenes role, like maybe stage manager or AV or cue cards, so I was nervous. We were getting ready to switch classes and then . . .

I was somewhere else, very far away, in a busy city. I didn’t recognize it, so it probably wasn’t New York, but I felt like all I needed to do was get over a bridge and I would be able to figure out which way to go to get back to Cranford. (Why Cranford? I don’t live in Cranford.) I struck out towards a nearby bridge (I have no idea how I knew the bridge was there, or whether it was the right bridge), and started running.

Except that I couldn’t run. Something was keeping my legs from stretching very far, so I had to kind of hop and jump. Then suddenly there were people all around me, all running to get to the bridge, and I panicked because I was hobbled and everyone was passing me. Then I realized that I was wearing a jeans skirt that had slipped down so far that it was squeezing my legs. So I yanked it up and was very relieved to be able to run, then thought “Shit, my skirt was so far down that I’ve been mooning everyone behind me this whole time. Oh well, never mind, at least I’m running now.”

Then I wasn’t on the bridge. Instead, I was in a dark room with lots of fabric on the wall and there was a man relaxing on the floor, or maybe a bed, and he was eating some kind of huge souffle or bread. He looked a little like Harry Belafonte. A woman came out of nowhere and told me he’s a bike messenger and can take me where I need to go. But first, he needed to finish his breakfast. There was kind of a pimp/prostitute vibe to it that made me uncomfortable, so I told her I was in too much of a hurry and I wasn’t sure I had money anyway, and I ran off . . .

. . . into a place that was like a combination between a mall (what’s with malls in my dreams?), a game show set and a circus. I kept trying to get people’s attention to ask them which direction to go, but they were all too busy either running a game show, or a three-ring circus, or working at the stores. There were no spectators or shoppers, just people running things. I kept trying to find a path through the chairs and set elements to get their attention, but I was on the outside of everything and there was no way inside. I wondered how everyone on the inside had gotten there, and then I was . . .

. . . in an airport. Yes! I could get a flight! Except that I couldn’t figure out where the terminals were, or what the Departing and Arriving boards said, or where to buy tickets. And I realized that I also didn’t have my purse. However, there was a little wristlet dangling from my right arm (I took a moment to thank myself for preparing this life-saving wristlet before the dream began), so I checked inside and found my passport and some cash. Nothing else. No driver’s license, no credit cards, no phone. Knowing that I didn’t have enough cash to get a flight, I started running out of the airport.

Then bike messenger guy/Harry Belafonte showed up, and he had a second seat on his bike. How many tandem messenger bikes have you seen? I’m guessing none. I’ve now seen one. “Do you know how to get to Cranford?” I asked. “Follow me,” he said. Which seems kind of silly now that I think about it, since getting on the bike seat behind him would kind of require that I follow directly behind him at all times.

We got going pretty fast and I was feeling better about things, but suddenly we were back outside, in the same city where we started, and it was cold out. Mr. Belafonte stopped and made us get off because the sidewalks were icy and it was too dangerous to ride. I say “us” because there was now another person with us, a younger girl, maybe a teenager, very thin and pale. She started complaining that we weren’t riding, and I thought “Who are YOU to complain? This is MY ride! And wait a minute, why am I planning to pay this guy for the ride when all he’s doing is walking his bike beside us?”

I looked at my watch (suddenly I had a watch), and it was 1:00 p.m. I was so relieved. Even though I had missed the rest of my classes for the day, I could possibly make it back in time for the performance. Which I assume was in Cranford.

And then . . . I was in bed, the crazy dream was dissolving, and I heard someone splashing in the bath. Whoever it was came out of the bathroom and walked toward me, and I was embarrassed because I had a huge chunk of cheddar cheese in my hand and was about to cram it in my mouth.

Thankfully that whole last part was also in the dream, including the cheese. I woke up sweaty and panicked, my neck so stiff I could barely get out of bed, my jaws aching from (I guess) grinding my teeth.

I never found out if I made it to my destination . . . Probably because I haven’t made it there yet in real life.

Ok, never mind all you psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, mind readers, tarot card readers and fortune cookie makers, I think I just figured out the meaning of this dream and so many others before it. The question is, how many more of these awful dreams will I need to have?????!!!!!!

By the way, I learned this from a recent episode of the show “Explained”: A question mark and an exclamation point together are called an “interrobang.” I’m happy to have provided this explanation/exclamation for anyone who has always been wondering.

Sometimes you just have to quit: How I prepared in advance for my own mental breakdown

I’ve always been an independent person. I don’t like to ask for help. I’m slightly on the introverted side, so I prefer to work by myself. Or with one or two people I really like. But most of all, I like to be creative. This was a good place to be, more than 20 years ago, when I started my career in corporate communications and was in a small team, managing a small publication on my own.

Then things started getting uncomfortable. There were promotions, there were children, there were projects and people to manage. All normal milestones in life, and of course there were many aspects of these changes that I enjoyed. And I was good at it. I could work 12 hours a day, take care of the kids, pay the bills, and all with a sunny disposition.

On one hand, I was proud of being able to accomplish so many things at once. But being good at getting things done is exhausting when the things you’re getting done are not ones you want to be doing. I’m talking about the work side of things, not kids or my home life. Those areas of my life I always cherished, but I never had enough time to really pay attention to them. To just enjoy them.

A slight buzzing had started in my head, a kind of background noise that crept in during times of stress and faded when things got quiet. Things were never quiet for long, and the moments of peace got to be few and far between.

The moment I knew I was in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, was when I was at home, giving a presentation to our CEO on the phone, with my boss on the line to assess my performance, while holding a squirming, sick, screaming toddler. I thought: Ok, now is the time to start hatching my escape plan.

You would think that planning ahead to leave something you don’t enjoy would make “that thing” easier to deal with. It didn’t. It made it worse. Watching my nest egg grow much too slowly, doing the calculations to determine when it was “safe” to leave . . . And the guilt of knowing that I was making a conscious decision to go from supporting my family to potentially making no money for a long time. It was suffocating.

The buzzing got worse.

I was anxious all the time. My heart raced, my blood pressure rose. I sweated even when I was cold.  In quiet moments I would sit and listen to my pulse pounding in my ears, and I could feel it in my nose. Sometimes I would get nosebleeds.

Eventually I got depressed. Nothing could make me happy. I withdrew from friends, family, activities, everything. I just wanted to be left alone.

One morning I found myself in my hotel room, pacing up and down the floor in my towel, gasping for breath. The reason? An event I was running later that day, one that I had run for 5 years in a row. In fact, one of many events and large meetings I ran throughout the year. Nothing major had ever gone wrong at any of them, and there was nothing special about this one.

But as I was getting ready to dry my hair and get dressed, I had a horrible thought: I couldn’t imagine the event happening. Usually before an event, I run through it in my mind, and I can see everything happening the way it should. That always gave me peace of mind, like I was just following a script that was already written. In this case, however, I couldn’t “see” the event. I took it as an omen that something was going to go terribly wrong, and my brain was protecting me by not letting me see it.

I panicked. I thought about packing my bag and running away. But I didn’t. I got through the event, it went well, and I got on the train and was happy to see my family when I got home. Fortunately that was only a few weeks before I walked out the door of my building for the last time, because I don’t think I would have survived another challenge.

I’ve been “free” for 9 months. Quitting wasn’t easy. I felt like . . . a quitter. And I still do.

If I had been a stronger person, I could have gone to therapy, taken antidepressants and continued on in my job for another 20 years. But even the thought of that depressed me. I don’t want to look back on my life and think “wow, I really hung in there, didn’t I?” There are no medals or rewards for suffering in silence.

So here I am, hustling to get freelance writing work every day, getting some here and there, writing personal things for my own amusement, and slowly adjusting to a life without constant stress. It sounds easy, but ironically, it’s a little . . . um, stressful. But there’s negative stress that eats at your mind and body, and then there’s constructive stress, which drives you to work hard at doing something you enjoy.

I can deal with constructive stress. So . . . Here I am. And here I go!