your dream journal

I went into my room this morning to look for my box of new checks. C was still blissfully asleep. As I attempted to quietly root around the bottom of my dresser drawer, I stumbled upon a small white notebook. This is no ordinary notebook. It is, in fact, a waterproof notebook. The pages are waxy feeling, and can be written on in water. B bought this for me during his first mania in the spring of 2006, when we floated down the Itchetucknee often. After C was born, B started using this hand-sized notepad as a dream journal, of sorts. He would wake up at night or first thing in the morning and write about his dreams, his thoughts as he drifted to sleep or battled insomnia. B encouraged me to read the entries as he wrote them—it wasn’t a private journal, just something he kept to document his dreams, I suppose.

Of course, when he left in March, the move was so sudden and abrupt that he didn’t take a single thing. Among his numerous possessions left was his dream journal, which I stumbled upon this morning.

I gasped as my hand touched it. I quickly looked up at C, who was still sleeping, her breathing rhythmic and her lips parted. My heart shattered, thinking of how much of her life her father has missed. I looked back down at the journal, expecting it to heat up or have some other supernatural power. It’s hard to believe it’s only a regular waterproof notepad.

Gingerly, I opened the cover. On the first page, I had written my name. Below that, B had written my name, his name, and “Beanie”, which is what we called C when I was pregnant with her (and still occasionally call her.) He wrote something about together for eternity next to our three names. Again, my heart broke.

I took the journal out into the family room. After leaving my dim bedroom, the light seemed jarring. I sat down, and looked at the newspaper, open on the table, and then looked back at the journal.

I started reading.

Within a couple minutes, I was done. I finished reading all the ups and downs, the unexpected twists and turns. The supreme peace you have once felt, and the severe turmoil you were—and maybe still are?—experiencing. My heart ached as I read the messages in the journal to me. “No matter what I say or do, know that the real B always loves you, Whitney.”

I do believe that, B; I just don’t know if the real B is alive or if he’s gone forever—and that is one of the many reasons why I feel so lost, so hopeless, so utterly sad. Are you dead or are you alive, somewhere, behind this horrible illness?

I just don’t know.

I sat in silence after I read the journal. It was comforting to see your familiar handwriting. Then I closed the journal and tucked it back in the drawer, where I did eventually find my checks. C was still asleep, sprawled across the bed.

My heart was broken a million times within the minutes I read your dream journal, B, because I remembered how much I love you, why I love you. My heart was broken a million times within the first minutes of the day.

And yet I am managing, somehow, to pull through the day…