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"Automat" by Edward Hopper

For years I had this recurring dream about a woman at a diner. I only stopped having the dream after I wrote it down and then used it as part of a bigger story I was writing...a 500 page story (mostly about a woman with bipolar disorder who may or may not be all she says she is) that I honestly don't know what to do with because I have no clue if it's actually readable and if it takes away from (or is disrespectful to) the issue of depression by having a science fiction element.

It's not so much the bigger picture I'm thinking of right now as how I sometimes wonder if this is more memory than dream...minus the time travel and references to the ongoing plot of the novel I tried to write. I sometimes think (because sometimes my family would go to a diner in Baltimore after we'd been to the movies and because the dream seemed so real) that I actually did see a woman like this in a diner once and that the memory of how sad she was stayed with me.

I don't know if this is normal or not, but sometimes I can't remember things from my childhood and I wonder if some things I do remember are more dream than memory. This is just one link I found (among many) where people wonder if you can get memories and dreams mixed up:

http://ask.metafilter.com/259662/Dream

set in 1980

What would I say now that I saw her? And how I had gotten here, anyway? This kind of thing never happened in real life, therefore, this couldn’t be real life.

She had told me all kinds of mad secrets further up in the timeline, but back then I hadn’t believed her. I had wanted to, but her disease had made it too easy to dismiss as fantasy. Time travel outside of science fiction? Impossible!

“Babe” played in the diner and I couldn’t help but laugh inside. This song had begun my melodramatic fascination with all things love…and not two tables over was the love of my life, Diana McAdams.

Even from this distance I could see her bloodshot eyes, her lack of awareness of her surroundings and the claustrophobic air of defeat all around her. She sat by herself. My heart broke.

I forgot that I was trapped in the body of ten-year-old me and that I had no reason for knowing her, that I wasn’t even sure how I knew this twentysomething downtrodden woman was actually Diana.

Getting up from our table, I also forgot that I was still accountable to adults in this world, namely, my own parents.

“Where are you going?” My dad asked, not unpleasantly.

“I’m going to ask that lady for ketch-up.” And before anyone could stop me I stood beside her.

It took a few seconds for her to become aware of me. “Yes?” Her voice sounded harsh and irritated, but when she turned and saw how young I was (or so I imagined) something in her eyes softened.

“Can I borrow your ketch-up?” I sounded much younger than most ten year olds did, but my tone was confident and knowing.

She blinked, hesitated, then leaned over to get it so she could hand it to me. “Here you go, kid.”

I smiled at her and her use of “kid,” her Southern drawl (much stronger in this now) at odds with the word.

“Thank you,” I said, then added in a whisper, “Someday, things are going to be a lot better for you. I promise. You are going to be cherished and loved very much.”

And before she could say anything I slipped back to the table, where I didn’t even get to explain my actions before everything started to fade.