Dreaming While Awake

Have you ever felt as if you are living in some sort of restless dream? It’s not quite a nightmare, but it’s not really a good dream either. I awaken every morning to a different, sad country song playing in my head, but I’m never really awake. The couch that is now my bed is hard and doesn’t allow for much real slumber. I drift in and out between nightmares and moments where my brain tortures me with embarrassing memories that I’d rather forget.

Even the daytime is strange and surreal. I step from my bedroom, which really isn’t mine anymore, but my sister’s, and walk into the empty house, much bigger than I remember it being. I look in each room, hoping that maybe someone is here today. No. It’s empty, just as it was yesterday. Even the refrigerator holds no note for me. The phone rings, and I rush to answer it, but it is only a recorded message, asking me if I want to win a free…click. I hang up the phone. Even I haven’t sunk low enough to need the voice of a recording.

Or maybe I do. I like to keep the TV on, or listen to music, because it kills the silence. The silence is broken only by the sound of the washing machine and dryer. There is another load of whites to be done after this one.

I’m leaving in a week, or rather, a week and a day. Friends are busy saying goodbye, yet, I’ve never felt so alone. I tell myself every day that it is good to be alone, because when I leave, I will be alone all of the time, especially at first.

You ask, why are you leaving, then, if you are so miserable? I ask that question too. Well, it had to happen sometime, right? I mean, I could have stayed nestled in my little comfort zone for a few years longer, but I’m realized lately that I’m outgrowing my pouch. I need to find a new place that can hold me, even when that means leaving the only safety I’ve ever known. It’s a gamble really. I’m trading my security (and possibly happiness), at a shot at doing bigger things, finding who I really am, finishing my education, and being happier in a new and greater situation. Of course, those are all the things I will win if the gamble goes my way. I’m not going to ponder the other side of that bet.

I’ve alienated one of the closest people in my world so that I can protect the both of us from the separation. This is a dry run. He sulks, I sit home and endure the loneliness. I’ve learned that I’ll never be happy with things as they are between us. There are still so many things I need to do with my life before I’m ready to share my life with just one person. Maybe he doesn’t get that. I know he doesn’t get that. But that’s alright. I’m protecting him now, and maybe he’ll thank me someday for the cushion I’ve given him.

At the same time, all is not dark. I rediscovered a dream that I had lost. The dream came in the form of a childhood character that I had created on paper and who lived in my mind and heart. Somehow, he escaped from the paper and I met him in life. Of course, my feet are still on the ground enough to know that it can’t be as magical as it seems, but…there are moments… There are moments like the one where I discovered a sketch that I had drawn as a child, and was startled because the boy in life and the boy from my stories have the same face, that I gave the boy the same face, name, and traits as a boy I would meet seven years later.

But these things cannot be real. They are merely dreams, dreams that just happen to take place while I am awake, dreams that I can share with those around me. This is why I fear I must be dreaming while awake. My whole life right now is one long, never-ending vision. I want to wake up, yet at the same time, if I do, I lose the magic of the dream, and return to the same reality that I was in before. The bottom line is that I’ve been bored for so long now. I feel that if I can just reach out beyond this living dream, that I will be able to break through into a part of life that I’ve never touched before. I’m holding out for something greater, but first, I must endure the dream.