I Know I’ll Eventually Wake Up
I’m at the beach with my family, bobbing in the waves. We splash around each other and pass judgment on each incoming swell: Over, Under or Ride It! My dad takes one into the shore. He turns around to wave goodbye and a look of sheer panic crosses his face. He dives back in, furiously paddling back to us, screaming all the while. I turn around to face the sea and feel the terror in my heart. The sun has been blocked from view by a sky-high tsunami, still miles out and growing every second. As soon as I see it, I can feel the undertow sucking us away from the land, towards a solid wall of water larger than anything I’ve ever seen in my entire life. We flail to the shore and mayhem ensues as beachgoers scramble, scream and scatter. I don’t know what to do. My family and I are going to die. I wake up sobbing.
I’m playing in the sand, not much older, still a child. It’s a gorgeous day, and the beach is quiet. A shadow rises and covers the beach. The tsunami is back and my world falls apart. My family is nowhere around. I take matters into my own hands, and decide to do what I always do when a big wave comes — lay my belly flat on the ocean floor until it passes. I run into the water despite strangers all around calling me back. They don’t know what to do, but at least I have a plan. I watch the tsunami, in seemingly slow motion, crawl towards the shore. I take a deep breath, submerge and brace for impact. When the currents take me, I’m tumbled and flipped like a rag doll and I never see the surface again. I wake up breathless.
I’m older now, just old enough to walk around the mall and see movies with my friends *UNSUPERVISED*. We’re lounging on picnic tables under the shade of palms, far back from the shoreline but still barefoot in the sand. We are cool and aloof. We are flirty and making progress. I’m annoyed when I see the tsunami — I was just on the verge of leaving with a boy, but now he is running for his life. All my friends take off so I run with them, like a pack of wolves, howling in fear, shrieking in futility. We are practically theatrical with it. The shore line disappears, gets swept up into the sea wall. We feel water from above like rain before we feel it from below like death. I wake up, heart racing.
I’m not even at the beach. I’m walking through a market, passing strangers and also everyone I’ve ever known. I’m not shopping or on any mission in particular, and it seems that every voice speaks a foreign language. I’m just walking, weaving in and out of tents and stalls, in the front shops where things are sold and through the back behind curtains where the merchants sleep. I hear screaming and crying and I run out to see if I can help. I can’t. It’s the wave. This market apparently is, always has been, on the doomed beachfront. I pass back through a beaded curtain and lay on a random bed. Take me, then, Ocean. Find me in this gypsy tent, fill my lungs with salt and sea, and see if I give a damn. I won’t waste my efforts on running. I know how this ends. I wake up.
I’m stretched out on a blanket with my boyfriend and he’s telling me something I don’t understand, dripping little sand dunes on my leg and avoiding eye contact with me. He’s repeated himself several times but I still can’t figure out what he said or meant. My voice becomes shrill and my face reddens with the heat of my frustration. Things escalate until I am openly weeping, dashing the sand off my leg and slapping his hand away from me.
“LOOK at me!” I plead.
“Look at that…” He points off into the horizon. I see that old bastard tsunami and feel my whole body relax with clarity.
“Ohhh. This is a dream!” I think to myself. I wasn’t misunderstanding him, and we weren’t fighting. Everything is okay. This is just a dream! A dream I’ve had since I was a kid… one that I’ve had dozens of times. We sit together, watching the wave’s approach. How funny to see him here, a place I’ve been coming to for so long. I can’t wait to see what it’s like when it hits us, now that I know I’m dreaming. Will it hurt? Will it pass over us, through us like a ghost? Will we float to the top like bubbles? I wake up too fast to find out, cursing the morning and wistful to return to sleep.
“To have a lucid dream you must know that it’s a dream while you’re dreaming. That’s it. It doesn’t require that you can control anything in your dream, though control is what beginning lucid dreamers often aim at,” says Berit Brogaard of Psychology Today. These days, I look forward to my lifelong reoccurring dream. The wave is opportunity to me now, when once, it was death and destruction. It’s a chance for me to practice control in my dreamscape. When I see it, I greet it warmly, like an old friend. I know the wave won’t kill me. I know I’ll eventually wake up.
