Dreams

For the past few weeks I have had many memorable dreams; I'm not sure if I am generally sleeping poorly, or if it is merely the morning sun waking me a bit earlier than usual and interrupting my REM sleep. For the most part my dreams have been bordering on nightmares, although they were filled primarily with embarrassment and not abject terror. One particularly bad one had me giving birth to a 18 week old fetus, it living (is that even possible?) but being a single mom, needing to call my own mother for help. (To date I don't think I have had a dream about children that would ever make me want to be a mother.)

But last night I had a dream that took quite a different turn. It was actually a fantastic dream where every wish I had for my future came true- until I woke up to the disappointment that is reality, and it was so deflating. Things became even worse because, as it was a Sunday morning, I went back to sleep, and though I recalled my previous dream and that it had only been a trick as a dream, my next dream incorporated it, and once again everything I wished for occurred, and I even said to myself in my dream, "I was so sad after I dreamed all of this had happened, but it was still possible- it was fate." And then I woke up again.

Now, in this dream, none of these wishes are things that I can affect. It isn't about hard work and optimism, it is about decisions made by someone else. And so these rather beautiful dreams were the worst I have ever had. I'll take the nightmares any day- real life can't be as awful as they are, but it also can't be as good as it was in my dreams last night.