Text Mode vs Icon Mode

What Illness, Dreams, and Bandwidth Have Taught Me About Survival

I have been sick.

Inflamed by a virus in my body and by pressures outside of it. I have completed rounds of antibiotics and steroids, yet my ears still ache, my body feels weak, and my patience is thin. This illness arrived a week before Thanksgiving and cost me something precious: a show I had been looking forward to all season, a character I loved inhabiting, a rhythm I had prepared for.

Before going to bed the other night, I wondered if I needed to call the doctor again. That question hovered quietly as I slept.

And then I dreamed.

I hadn’t had disturbing dreams or nightmares in months. That alone felt notable. Over the summer, after a long period of deep inner work, something shifted. The nightmares stopped. I slept. I even remarked on this during a recent telehealth appointment. For the first time in my life, rest came without symbolic ambush.

Until the bombs started falling.

When the Language Returns

The dream took place in a familiar setting: a school or art community I have visited before in dreams. Artists of all kinds were there, learning, working, creating. There was no panic. Instead, there were transmissions. Information.

Bombs were going to be dropped from the sky. One for sure. Two maybe. Three doubtful, but we would see.

We were told to prepare.

What struck me immediately upon waking was not fear, but recognition. I hadn’t had a dream like this in a long time. And I hadn’t been this sick and derailed in a long time either.

That correlation matters.

I’ve come to understand that my psyche has more than one way of communicating. When my body is stable and resourced, I can think in paragraphs. I can articulate, reflect, narrate. Call it text mode.

When I am inflamed, exhausted, or under sustained stress, something else takes over. Communication compresses. Images replace sentences. Meaning arrives as symbols, not explanations.

Text mode unavailable. Switching to icons.

An emoji works this way. A heart can carry love, grief, beauty, longing, connection. It’s a compression of something far larger. Symbolic dreams function similarly. They are not less intelligent than linear thought. They are more efficient.

This realization reframed not only this dream, but decades of earlier nightmares.

A Childhood of Compression

I was sick often as a child. Injured, inflamed, ignored. When I did use my voice, it fell on deaf ears or was punished. Symbolism became a language I could speak fluently because it didn’t require permission.

Under duress, my psyche learned to rehearse survival internally. Repetition did not produce hysteria. It produced preparedness.

So when illness returned in adulthood, when my bandwidth narrowed again, the symbols returned too. Not as regression, but as fallback protocol.

Preparation Without Panic

In the dream, we packed. Not frantically. Methodically.

I gathered my tools and supplies. I prioritized animals, mostly cats. I hid some in safe places. I brought others with me. Not for companionship, but for protection. Their safety mattered more than my comfort.

The bombs did not destroy the community. They never do. But we prepared anyway.

After the first drop, I returned to assess. After the second warning, I packed again. This time lighter. More condensed. Some tools were unnecessary. One tool could do several jobs.

By the third round, I questioned whether I needed to leave at all.

This progression stayed with me.

Under repeated stress, the psyche refines. It doesn’t accumulate. It edits.

The Car Without a Steering Wheel

The most striking image came during the second evacuation. My car no longer had a steering wheel. Instead, there was a flat bar with levers and buttons. A smaller interface. Less familiar.

I felt nervous, but not helpless. I knew I would figure it out with repetition. I merged into traffic carefully. Everyone else flowed along, oblivious to bombs or missing steering wheels.

And I merged.

This image landed cleanly when I woke. My usual way of navigating life feels unavailable right now, not because I’ve lost competence, but because the conditions have changed. Illness alters agency. Grief alters timing. Honesty alters relationships.

The system is streamlined, not broken.

Incoming Bombs in Waking Life

As I reflected, the metaphor sharpened.

The bombs weren’t catastrophe. They were extraction. Repeated boundary violations. Over-giving. Staying polite when my body was signaling no. Reaching for companionship and coming away burned.

I had been tracking my nervous system responses for months. After certain interactions, I felt depleted. After others, warm and settled. A cat photo brought softness. Violent content hardened my chest. So I left the platform. With people, I began doing the same.

Transparency hasn’t been received well. Truth often isn’t. But pretending neutrality where there is harm became impossible once I saw the pattern clearly.

Depletion makes the body susceptible. Illness forced me to stop negotiating.

The Bomber’s Note

Near the end of the dream, I received a note. It was from the bomber. He outlined where and when the next bomb might fall so I could prepare.

I felt seen.

And then came the painful, fleeting question: Does the bomber love me?

That question startled me awake. Not because it was true, but because it revealed something tender. Being seen has so often been confused with being protected. That confusion has a long history.

I questioned it immediately. Returned to the task at hand. Reality testing intact.

What Illness Reveals

This dream was not a warning. It was a mirror.

Illness lowers bandwidth. Lower bandwidth triggers compression. Compression brings symbols. Symbols rehearse survival. Awareness turns rehearsal into mastery.

I don’t panic because I’ve been here before. Repetition has taught me how to respond. What others read as numbness is often competence earned under pressure.

The nightmares stopped when I could translate them consciously. They returned when my body could no longer afford long explanations.

That is not failure. That is intelligence.

Integration, Not Interpretation

I don’t analyze dreams because I enjoy drama. I analyze them because they are data. Gold extracted from feverish states. Meaning distilled under constraint.

I no longer ask what the symbols predict. I ask what state produced them.

This one was clear.

I am sick. I am tired. I am honest. I am done absorbing bombs I saw coming.

And I am still steering, even if the controls look different for now.

I am still steering, even if the controls look different for now.