The first time I fell into a depression I was waiting tables at an Outback Steakhouse. I was maybe 25. I remember waiting on a table of some old people. As I took their order, it was if they turned into chubby little babies begging me for food. As the night wore on more and more people became babies, until I walked out of the kitchen to deliver a Bloomin’ Onion to a table and the whole restaurant was filled with crying adult babies. Its sounds silly I know, but they were all so helpless that it somehow just kept pounding away on my heart until I had a break down. I wanted to help them but realized I couldn’t, not in any real lasting way. They would always be helpless little beings crying for a little food, crying for a little love.
After a couple of weeks of calling out sick for work, I had to quit. I could no longer function. So I went and lived in a monastery.
It was there that I had a dream. A tall pale blue horse stood in a battlefield of fire and smoke. The horse was not afraid and it spoke to me. “Why don’t you let yourself be loved?” it inquired and then it disappeared in the thick smoke. I could hear the sounds of war, gunfire, men screaming. I looked for the horse because I could hear its hoofs all around me. I came to the edge of a muddy river. I knelt on the bank and saw that the river was blood. I heard a voice. “The baby is you.” I looked up and saw the horse on the opposite bank. The smoke rolled in again like a heavy fog from the river. I heard babies crying and I woke up coughing. I coughed up something black.
Later that week I received a letter from my sister. Our Grandfather had died. He was only 68 and a veteran of World War II. He’d died in a house fire the night I’d had my dream.
