Nocturnal Wanderings

I spent most of last night riddled with one dream after another, waking up exhausted as if I had just run a mental marathon. Strange dreams that I have yet to make any sense of.

In one, I was at Chapters, but the bookstore had morphed into a dance bar. I remember dancing with someone I was interested in, although in the light of day his face has faded from my memory. My sister came up and told me I couldn’t dance. An odd thing for her to say, considering dancing is something I do well. In my dream I knew this, but there was also a little voice saying ‘what if you’ve been wrong this whole time?’. There was a small time lapse in the dream and the next thing I know I am grabbing my sister’s face as hard as I can, incensed over her meanness towards me, feeling betrayed and thinking of all the things I could have said to her in return, but never did. I tell her instead she’ll want to give me a wide berth for a good, long while. I remember in my dream trying to hurt her with the force of digging my fingers into her cheeks. I wanted to hurt her physically, to make her feel the same pain I experienced from her remark, but in a different way.

My mind then bled into another dream. My sister and I were at a police station, no reason as to why, when we were suddenly taken hostage by two young men. One held a razor to my sister’s neck, but the razor was no bigger than a thumbnail. His accomplice held me, but his only threat was to hold his fist near my face. I laughed and told him that was enough ‘just don’t mess the face, man’. I felt no fear, though I sensed my sister’s. We were running up a twisting flight of stairs with windows lining the wall when one of them yelled to duck and we all hit the floor. I woke up then, wishing I hadn’t, curious to see where the dream would have taken me.

It’s strange the places we go when we dream. Sometimes I jump into the lives of my characters and show up in their world. Sometimes they mesh into mine. I meet people I’ve never set eyes on before but feel like I know, catch up with friends I don't see enough of, visit places I’ve never been, have relationships with men only dreamed about from afar. It’s like my own little story book every time I close my eyes and drift off. A front row seat in the movie threatre of my imagination. It’s a happy place, an escape. I look forward to it each night and am rarely disappointed. Even the mundane seems more exciting in your mind.