...Welcome...

Hey...

Welcome...

This is the space...where my adventures will be chronicled. My past examined. My future questioned?

This is the place...where I will tell all my ups and downs and ups again. Hopefully.

I should describe myself a little first. I may be staying anonymous for a time, until I feel it's safe (Note: some of my stories Will contain drug use, May contain sexual encounters, and Will Almost Certainly contain scenes of emotional/mental confusion).
I will say that I am female, 25, and living in Cardiff, Wales. That possibly narrows it down enough, with the potential content of the blog, for people who know me to identify me (potential employers hopefully will find it somewhat more difficult to put name to face..)

And...
I suffer from depression. Occasionally partnered with paranoia. Sometimes manifesting as mania followed by intense lows (although I don't consider myself 'bi-polar').

Anyways,
I want to get on and write something interesting for my first post.

I want to start with a dream...

It's a dream I keep having. I can't quite think when the first time I had it was...some time back though I'm sure. I feel like I've been having it a long time now.

It's not every night. Mostly I get it when I'm stressed in real life, or things have started to fall apart around me.

It started as fish tanks.
In the dream, there are several, and I'm trying to organise the fish in them into the 'right' tanks, otherwise they'll die; from being eaten by fish they shouldn't be with, or some other reason.

Eventually rats, and occasionally rabbits as well are involved, but always the same thing: I have to sort them into the right hutches/cages/tanks, or they'll suffer.
In most versions of the dream, the animals are fairly neutral about it. In one or two they're trying to escape or bite me while I'm trying to move them.

The fish tanks are usually quite large and full of exotic, and occasionally scary looking fish.

There are usually people in the dream, with me. People who I recognise as friends (although usually, they are no one specific I can recognise from real life). They never help me though. No matter how close they come to me in the dream, and what they say, they do not help me with the fish tanks.

It's been suggested to me, and I do believe that the dream means needing to sort things in my life out, or worrying too much about needing to anyway. I tend to have it when things have gotten messy.

In one more recently, there was a tank in each room of a huge, weirdly laid out house I and some 'friends' had moved to. As I explored the house and went into each room I discovered the tank in each, apparently left by previous tenants, and I'm thinking I'll have to sort them out but then I look and each is actually OK.
Except the one in 'my room', which is cloudy and needs cleaning.

I took this one to mean I should worry less about other people's problems and focus on my own, as other people will probably be fine. 

....

Even more recently, I had another version. One without animals at all, but it felt the same.

I was in an acquaintances bedroom, and somehow there were a load of ovens up in there. I'm trying to cook a load of meals for an increasing number of people. Running between the ovens like I usually see myself run between fish tanks.
Again, no one really helps. In fact they kind of mess with stuff or move it around so I don't know what I'm doing.

The people in this one were more vivid and definitely all people I know in real life, which is odd as well, as normally they're people I just identify as 'friends' in the dream, but can't pin down who they represent in real life.
I think again, that this dream is about worrying too much about what other people think.



Anyways, there's a reason I wanted to share this with you first, apart from it being potentially interesting.
The other night I had the dream again. Only different.

In this version, we are back to rabbits. My (real-life) rabbit, Colin, is hopping around in front of me. Suddenly, he's 3 and I have two in my lap while one runs around on the floor...
....
Then I'm wandering through a courtyard, and there are people here whispering at me about being careful, because there's these people who're some kind of dangerous radicals and they're scared of them.
...
I'm in a big, windy, weird house with lots of rooms. I'm not supposed to be here. People aren't angry that I'm here but I have the increasing sense of having outstayed my welcome. I'm supposed to leave now.
But I'm looking for my rabbits. These people have them and I want to see them before I go.
...
I find my rabbits, on the laps of a woman and several young female children in a living room type place in the house. The kids are hitting the rabbits. The woman seems like this is normal.
I feel angry but I don't take the rabbits off them then and there. I instead go about the house looking for something else (more rabbits? Their hutch to take them back with?).
...
I realise it's not just rabbits. There are hamsters I have to get too. (Note: usually the dreams only contain animals of types I actually keep as pets in real life, fish or rabbits or rats...hamsters are a new one and I haven't ever kept them). I search and search and am increasingly aware I shouldn't be here.
...
I am sneaking around, trying not to be seen still in the house, when I come to a room near the top of the house. Inside are the rabbit houses and as well, a pyramid of hamsters, not in a cage but all struggling to get down to a food bowl underneath the bottom hamsters. There's only one small bowl and Loads of hamsters trying to get to it.
Next to this is a fish tank. No fish though. Just more hamsters.
Inside the tank is the top part (the wire bit) of a hamster cage. Sitting like a shark-cage in the water. This makes it so there's only the little door on the cage that they can use to get in and out of the tank. They seem to be using it to get water for themselves, by diving into the tank and then trying to get back out. But they can't get back out because so many of them are in there, pushing around trying to get back out the little door.
They're drowning.

I woke up confused and saying
"They're hitting the rabbits and drowning the hamsters!"

It took me a while, and a friend's help to realise that this one, despite the advice of previous dreams, meant I was worried about someone else. The rabbits were mine, but the hamsters, and the house weren't mine. I was in someone else's place, looking out for their animals. I wasn't as stressed as in other dreams, only a little angry and determined to put a stop to the animals' torment. I'm worried about this person's hurt.
The rabbits that were mine though, were being hurt as well. Perhaps I'm worried I will suffer in the process of trying to help this person.

It took a little longer to work out who this person might be. It's someone I've only recently met. They're coincidentally the person who inspired me to start this blog, as part of an ongoing project to explore our experiences of depression, drug abuse, and other mental illnesses.
You can find his stories here: http://bbagsattic.blogspot.co.uk/