Dreams

I would never have thought that finding such a connection would ever have been possible.

Especially when it was in a dream. To someone I’d never ever met in person. What a spectacularly wondrous dream it was, too. Yet even the happiest of dreams can lead to very dark places.

Because all dreams start with your eyes closed. All dreams begin with the extinguishing of the light.

It happened, didn’t it? I woke up feeling as though I had lived an entire life within the confines of a dream that even now lapses further into history, made hazy by the onerous march of time.

How does one go from the extraordinary to the mundane in the space of a few hours, and not feel shortchanged by the banality of reality? Would we not end up cursing such explicit vividity for showing us glimpses of lives never led?

The sheer crushing tiredness of disappointment would be enough to do anyone’s head in. And here I am, having my head done in. Why was I so exhausted and weary? Why have I woken up feeling like I’ve been dragged through the valleys of fate and destiny?

As though I’d travelled far and wide, across untold distances and time, to wake up in the exact same spot I’d gone to sleep decades earlier?

The obvious bits are easy to remember.

She was beautiful, of course. With the voice of an angel and the practised smile of a camera-friendly veteran. It’s not as though she was an unknown spectre from hitherto unexplored nor unfamiliar aspects of my soul.

That would make the well of emotion even harder to fathom than it already is. Yet here I am, recalling in dreamy clarity the soft timbre of her delivery when it came to jokes. The cheekiest of winks as she mimed a stupid scene in a film. The sincerest of grins when she pulled me close and told me that she loved me.

I can see, in almost haunting detail, the minutiae of an existence that had never been realised. I can feel, in the dull residue of fantasy and imagination, a weight so deep and incomprehensible that I am fearful of what it really means. I can sense the choking desperation as part of me clings to what seemed to be, for however briefly my dreams flew, or however long my infinity lasted, the love of my life.

An entire life.

Years had come and gone. Time had disappeared and resurfaced in the odd manner of someone unaccustomed to linearity, yet revelling in its limitations. I had gained and lost more than I had ever thought possible.

Dates. Holding hands. Kisses. Movies. Fights. Laughter. Cries.

Moving in. Leaving. Two doors down. Surprises. Cuddles.

She had been as real to me as the shoes that now cover my feet, or the wind that brushes through my hair. I can almost taste the colour of her hair. The caress of her breath on my skin. The smell of every barbecue and home-cooked meal we’d ever shared.

And yet…

It was all a dream.

Does that make it any less real?