Flying Past the Sun

I woke up this morning after five nightmares. Five. I don’t have them very often, probably as much as any sane adult has nightmares. But last night, whoa. That was different. I have absolutely no idea why, but for some reason or another I was piled with five awful, disturbing nightmares that left me wishing I could just shut everything off and forget the night ever happened. Actually, scratch that, forget the past few months ever happened. Most people, in some way or another I suppose feel that way. There’s a lot of people who have had a lot of good happen to them this year. I’ve sure had a lot of good things happen too despite all this. But there’s moments, or days, or weeks even, where you wish you could forget everything that’s happened since March and go back to where you were.

The thing is, life doesn’t work like that. You can’t change the past, and you can’t get back lost time. That’s a lesson that I learned, perhaps the hard way, throughout this. Instead, you can look to the future, how it will be better than yesterday and how each day brings itself new blessings and new opportunities. If only it were that easy. Naturally, I’m a dreamer. Day dreaming, getting lost in my own thoughts, creating vivid worlds inside my head and spending more time there than in the real world. Often times it’s a good thing. I get creative, ambitious. But other times, it’s not. You become anxious or worried or obsessed with things that aren’t even there. It’s a double edge sword in every way.

Dreams are a work of fiction, of course. Your mind pieces things together to create a semi-memorable image, or perhaps even a story, with random articles in your subconsciousness. But as random or chaotic or fictional as a dream may be, dreams are in many ways grounded in some amount of truth. Dreams say something about you in a way that reality simply doesn’t, precisely because of its uncontrolled and chaotic nature. Your most secret ambitions. How you truly see the world around you, the nitty and gritty details of your relationships. And naturally, your deepest fears.

What’s In A Dream

Dreams can be quite random. I’ve had dreams where my cousins and I had to deal with a lion that had escaped from the zoo (though I don’t remember the specifics, I don’t think I survived that one). They don’t always make sense, but dreams are at least somewhat familiar no matter how silly or absurd they are. You may be sitting for tea and crumpets with three unicorns, and one of them sounds exactly like someone you went to college with, while another reminds you in some way of a childhood trauma. Whether it’s a magical dream of gumdrops and lollipops, or a tragic nightmare cowritten by William Shakespeare and Steven King, dreams tell a lot about the dreamer. Looking at dreams requires looking at yourself, and it isn’t always pretty.

I don’t want to dive too deep into the specifics of any of my nightmarish dreams because it’s a little more personal than I want to get here, and it’s not that important anyway. If I wanted an interpretation, I’d go somewhere else. But even if the details aren’t important, the emotions are. Because really, that's what lasts when you wake up. I felt fear. Anger. Sadness, loneliness. I felt frustrated, distant, like I was struggling to even breathe. I saw myself given massive responsibilities and fail. I saw myself abandoned and wanting to be close to the people I care about but not being able to. I saw myself angry and annoyed at the people I love and myself storming out. I saw myself surrounded by drones and zombies and wanting to scream and run. I saw all of my worst fears in one night. I’d fallen out with my family. I’d been abandoned by my friends. I collapsed under the weight and pressure. Everyone I knew was different than I’d seen them before. So was I.

But they’re just dreams, right? Nothing more.

Every dream has some amount of truth in it. Each one had my deepest fears in front of me. And to say they’re all just dreams… well, I really, desperately hope they are. But all those things are the same things I feel when my eyes open again. Deep down, I’m scared and hurting. I’m scared of all of those things. I don’t want to feel alone or distant. I don’t want to be separated from my family. I don’t want to fall under the weight and pressure and fail. They may be dreams now. But what happens in a month? What happens when I’m finally fed up with living at home? What happens when I’ve been separated from my friends so long we just forget each other? What happens when I have to manage a classroom in September and I can’t even smile under my mask? I pray, I hope that these fears are irrational. But what if they’re not?

Icarus

When I was young, every so often I’d have a dream where I would begin to float up and away into the sky. It wasn’t one dream where it kept happening, but it could happen in the middle of any dream, regardless of where I was, who I was with, or what I was doing. At first, I thought it was a nightmare. I’d be confused, scared, and alone, slowly going higher and higher like a balloon without purpose or direction. When I’d wake up, the first thing I’d do was check to see that gravity still worked and I was firmly in my bed. Overtime, I learned to recognize that normally, gravity doesn’t work that way. It was, in fact, a dream. More often than not, that wakes you up, when you realize you’re dreaming and everything around you is crafted solely by the mechanisms of your mind. But not always. And then, one night during one of those dreams and on the rarest of occasions, I realized that if this was all a dream, I might just be able to control it.

And so I did. Floating, became flying. I could control my own destiny, my dreams and the world around me. If I was in a spot of trouble, I’d pick myself up and fly out of there. I’d escape and be free from everything that grounded me. It was as beautiful as you’d imagine flying to be (precisely because it was imagined). Of course, you can’t get too carried away. You get too excited, you fly too close to the sun, your wings melt and you wake up. But supposing you kept your cool, you could not only fly, but soar. That was my intention: to soar above it all, direct my own majestic path, and watch the world below.

Now, I can’t fly in real life (which I suppose goes without saying). Dreams are dreams, myths are myths. By all accounts, the type of dream that relies on perilous escape by flight, only to fly too close to the sun or wake up and have it all come crashing down, should be a tragedy. Icarus was (I highly suggest reading the story if you’re not familiar). But what if it’s not a tale of dreaming too high, but of taking destiny into your own hands? Finally, for a moment, being free? If you look at it not as story of detriment and failure, but as triumph, persistence, determination, then Icarus is an inspiration. So what if he dreamed too big? He accomplished what no one else did: he flew up to the heavens, something others could only dream of. Who wouldn’t get carried away?

Turning a Tragedy into a Legend

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” -Vivian Greene

Dreams aren’t real. But they are grounded in some amount of reality. Or at least, in some perceived reality. I’m up against a lot. Pushing on month six of staying home, I’m desperate to return to some regular routine that gets me regularly out of the house and away. That said, should we actually return to school in September, it’s going to be awkward and weird and I’m going to have a huge responsibility in the strangest start of the year imaginable. I try distracting myself as much as possible from the rest of the world, but I still need social interaction, and ideally, I’d like to see people’s smiles and give them hugs again (not to mention I’m still scared of everyone I know wearing masks). I’m going to have to deal with big changes and responsibilities and it’s not going to be comfortable. I’m terrified of it. It keeps me up at night and now even sleep isn’t an escape.

I can’t fly away from it as I did in several of my childhood dreams or as Icarus did. I so, terribly wish I could escape or be done with it. To fly up and away and go hide on a tropical island or something until this thing is done. But I can’t. I have to fight the fight. If not for me, for the people I love who need me. So I’m here, waiting. Waiting for the inevitable. Hoping, desperately, that when the trumpets sound and the battle rages I stand up to the task. Often times, I don’t know if I can. I doubt myself in a way that I haven’t since high school.

But if I remember what came after high school, then maybe I have some amount of hope. I grew in ways I never imagined. Found myself doing things I’d never believed I could. Becoming friends with the most unlikely people, venturing out to places I’d thought impossible, conquering the world as I saw it. I reached glory and triumph. I reached the sun. So why should I stop dreaming now?

I can make my nightmares reality. But I can make the good dreams reality just as well. I can have ambitions and goals and I can work towards them even now. I can enjoy life as I am, best I can. Create mini adventures and enjoy the company I’m with. I can find my own ways to grow and succeed and become a better person because of all I’ve endured. I can be determined to take up whatever challenges come to me and face them head on. I’ll fly as I did before. With a little perseverance, determination, and luck, I may reach the sun. And once I've done that, I’ll go further still, flying past the sun into the great unknown with all the confidence and spirit I had before.