Some say that a dream is only a fleeting wish, something easy to let go, and is often associated with sleep, another fleeting wish.  The thing they don’t realize is that a wish isn’t a dream, but a dream is a wish.  It can happen when you sleep, a dream of events both sweet and terrifying, but it isn’t just that.  For me, my dreams are to become a journalist, to be with people and write the stories and news that I read now.  For me, a dream is more than a short moment that I see in my sleep.  To me, my dream is reality, and reality, especially now, is exactly what I need.

My dream is a wish, but it is also my hope.  My hope is to think that maybe, sometime soon, I won’t be afraid of the people I want to talk to, or afraid of the situations that I want to write about.  My hope is that someday, I can be more than the one with the lingering terror telling me that I can’t meet anyone new, or go any place that I don’t feel 100% comfortable in.  I want to be able to be exactly who I want to be.  My hope is to know how to overcome and make my dream, my hope, a reality.

I had never realized how much I needed my dream until recently.  I was diagnosed with panic disorder and depression, something that makes it hard to wake up and be okay with going to school or to the local Walmart without being constantly afraid of the groups in the halls or the little old lady who is walking down the aisle toward me.  My dream never took that into account; how could I be someone who worked with and spoke with people if I was so afraid of them that I couldn’t speak to them, see them, or be near them without running away, shaking, or breaking down?

Last week, I finally hit my limit.  I went to church one day, a place with about 20 members that I know extremely well and have grown up around, and I wasn’t there for 5 minutes before I had to leave, shaking and close to tears.  I was terrified of everyone and everything, from the dust in the air to the 3-year-old girl in the pew behind me.  The fifteen-minute ride back home was torture.  Loud street noise, large cars, and the people who drove those cars made for a ride of misery.  When I got home, I could barely move out of my seat, and when I did, I ran to my room, just making it before having a major panic attack.  I don’t remember my panic attacks, only intense fear and the after affects.  I couldn’t walk.  I couldn’t speak.  I couldn’t think.  I couldn’t function.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, I suffered two other major panic attacks later that day, and they didn’t stop after that.  This continued all week, panic attack after panic attack, to the point where I was admitted to the hospital… which only made it worse.

I tried to be positive, but I was in pain, afraid, and in a place that I felt wasn’t safe and wasn’t home.  By day 2, I felt as if I lost all hope.  I felt that my plans, that my dream, had been dashed.  I felt that I would never be able to continue writing because I draw inspiration from people.  I felt that maybe everyone was right, that a dream was only a fleeting wish, something that would never come true and that I would eventually forget.  Then I met my first nurse.  A nurse is someone who has to be calm when their patients aren’t, someone who can work with people and be supportive in every situation.  My nurse had panic attacks, and she wasn’t the only one.  I met 5 different people after her who had the same thing, and they were hospital staff who had to be brave and calm, cool, and collected even through the worst times.  They had pushed past what I thought was inescapable and had followed their dreams.  Their dreams weren’t fleeting wishes, they were realities.

It was then that I realized that my dream would never become something that I would have to give up, and that is why I have decided to fight.  I want to be and live my dream no matter what, and that is why I didn’t quit when I had reached what I had assumed was my limit.  My dream pulled me from my own self-induced depression and eased the fear that came with thinking that everything that I had wanted, that I had planned, would be nothing but dust in the wind.  My dream became my life raft.

In all honesty, sometime a dream is just a fleeting wish or some aspect of sleep, but it is also a light in the dark when all you can see is black and all you can feel is helpless and hopeless.  My dream gave me the will to fight, and I plan to fight to the end to make my dream, the thing that “saved me,” a reality.  In the words of Walt Disney, “If you can dream it, you can do it."