Falling in Love in a Dream
Have you ever fallen in love with someone in a dream?
Just now, I fell in love in my dreams. For a few brief moments, I roll around confused and with thoughts racing towards the future; it is the middle of the night, a cold breeze passes by my skin, and a weird feeling of non-belonging to this reality comes through all of me.
I'm then whisked back into the past four hours of comatose. It's my university campus, or at least it's the feeling of it, leading to merging buildings from different eras of my life. A mass of faceless students and mixed identities give off the impression of familiarity and nostalgia. I think we were being hunted, or perhaps it was some sort of contest to weed out the weak and pathetic, but I'm saved.
I find a girl, and we connect our hair together, and from that moment on, we unite. This is in spite of the surrounding chaos. I feel at home. She's composed of several faces and identities, and they're always shifting, but this point of comfort remains. I love her, and she loves me, and we are saved.
There's a little reflection at this point. I'm not considering the implications of the sudden passionate affair on the narrative of my life. I don't question the lack of information available. I simply embrace the situation. There are conversations and some exchange of personal details, but language and symbols act as a port of arrival and departure. There's no essence behind them, like I'm floating on semantics. And then awake all that's left is the peculiar feeling that I've lived the life of another.
Sure the feelings are there, and in some state of mind, I, too, had it once existed in this strange world and in this strange arrangement. Yet, I can't help but feel that this was someone else's dream, with only the decorum of my own nostalgic placeholders to offer some hope of familiarity. Yes, I was dreaming but was it really my dream.
When we dream, it's as if our identities become these barely tangible vessels that follow the directions of a much darker and primal section of the mind, leading us to brush against those limits of personal understanding one might find far too intolerable when awake. The only bridge between these worlds is those simple sensations; fear, lust, love, and acceptance. These resonate like a pale imprint on our waking minds. I certainly felt that this strange memory of a lover feeling connected and eternal with another all experienced from the vantage of my bed.
For a while, I mourn the loss of her. I now grieve the loss.
Is it really just a manifestation of my own uncovered longings to be this sad over the loss of some self-manufactured lover? Isn't just a little bit narcissistic? But it's not like we don't project our own expectations and ideals onto our very real partners! Do we really know them, or are we in love with who we wish them to be?
Now, I go about writing this post, patiently, waiting for those hours when I can once again fall in love.