"Did I dream you up? Did you step out of my fantasy?"
"I've searched the world for you. You are everything I ever dreamed about but never thought I'd find."
"You're like this dream that I try not to lose when I wake."
"You're every guy's wet dream."
All in the last year. (That first one, almost to the day.) Not all from the same men. Not even all of the quotes, of the times and ways it has been said.
Maybe I've been the nebulous hope or desire for something, or the metaphysical entreaty for relief through some uncanny fulfilment. Maybe I've been the center of reverie-fraught, hazy images and impressions and feelings—impractical and tantalizing and seductive. Mystical, phenomenal, and evanescent.
Dreams are our brain's way of dealing with our day, our problems, and our lives. We subconsciously make sense of what confounds us by sorting and shifting and shuffling, playing out possibilities in confusing symbolic meanings. Dreams last for moments or minutes. Sometimes we remember them and hang onto them as long as we're able, and sometimes they are lost to the eye-opening.
I don't want to be a dream. I want to be a wake.
Yes, the waking, the predominant amount of time in which we conduct these fragile lives. But also the spray and splash that trail a craft as it propels, the beautiful pattern that follows movement through time and space, a confluence of current that can only exist in that way at that moment.
Coincidentally, a wake is also a group of vultures. In the metaphysical realm of animal totems, vultures are a reminder to be patient; to use your keen insight in order to soar above your limitations, powerfully and efficiently and effortlessly; and to choose paths that support your higher consciousness and your heart, demanding the same from those of whom you are fiercely protective. (Vultures always appear at the most poignant of times in my life.)
I don't want to be someone's unattainable dream. I don't want to be stored tightly in the darkest corners of a heart until it's safe to pull me out and look at me one more time.
If you dream of something and it comes into your life, seize it. Don't waste it. Reach out and grab it and don't let it go. You may still fumble and drop it; it may shatter into a million, irreparable pieces. But you were given the opportunity for a reason, whether you believe it to be divine intervention or the result of your own subconscious calling forth what it wanted and needed most. Don't wither what you've worked so hard to bring to fruition.
Sleep to rest. Dream to live. And if you're dreaming of me instead of living me, you're a goddamn fool to let that go.
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