Don’t Wake Me Up
Have you ever had a dream so perfect, so lucid, it was even better than the best movie you could imagine — all because you were living it. A dream better than virtual reality… a perceived real experience simply because your subconscious believed it was.
If only I could record the clip I’ve replayed in my mind a million times, capture it forever and lay down and plug-in and play it over and over again. All I want is to fall back into that dream and live in that world forever.
But then what? That golden moment, so vivid only seconds ago… already the memory is fading. How did it feel to kiss you, where did you move your hands, all the little details are slipping away like quicksand until all I’m left with is the feeling of sheer contentment and excitement of an entirely new world opened up before me. Unfiltered joy, interleaved with a sense of calm, and strangely, focus — careful to neatly file away the memory, as if to have a future cue that keeps an elusive opportunity from slipping through my fingers.
And yet… Reality is an inescapable poison, seeping in through the cracks as I try to decrypt the dream. Analyzing every step to figure out how to replicate the outcome. Where did it begin? What did I say? How did I have the courage? Why was it reciprocated and mostly, would it be in real life?
And with that question, like the crack of a whip the joy is gone, because I know the answer. A million reasons compounded by the simple fact of biological mechanical human sexual attraction screams “NO.” It’s the worst moment, as the weight of the entire and very real world sinks in. The futility of my situation becomes immediately overwhelming; reality is stark and unavoidable and there is no room for even the fleeting possibility of such a moment coming to fruition.
Despite the futility of such thoughts… the mind has a frustrating tendency towards optimism. So difficult it is to accept the concept of “impossible” while the subconscious stores a tiny indestructible remnant of hope. Just like seeds of doubt, seeds of hope are impossible to eradicate once planted in the imagination. They take root and grow like invasive weeds, equally resilient to diligent daily trimming as they are to more aggressive forms of maintenance: self-deprecation, distraction, strong doses of reality — hope can withstand all, even when you wish it dead.
A masochistic pattern commences. The addictive lure of feeling what it might be like, an experience that is as real as anything until I’m shaken back to earth with the ping ping ping of my morning alarm. No, I’m not ready to face the real world. Let me stay here instead — in a universe where hope and possibility and my wildest imaginations are allowed to take shape, to breath, to prosper.
Inevitably, I acquiesce to the demands of reality. Swallow the bitter pill that is existing in a world where we, you and I together, don’t exist and never will. Nonetheless, pieces of the dream will flash in my mind. Despite inconveniently disrupting my day, these quickly become my favorite distractions. Leaning in, uncertain. Hovering on the edge. And I remember now — you must’ve committed first, because I’m a coward. An hour later, I can still feel your phantom hand on my waist, slipping down.
No, stop, none of that happened. That was not real. Be here now, don’t you always say? Be. Here. Now.
And then I’m back in bed, trying to fall asleep and like an alcoholic craving the bottle, I’m desperate to return to that imagined world just so I can have a taste of “what if?” I know the hangover will come in the morning. I know it will hurt. And in many ways, that’s my favorite part. So eager to feel something again, to have my heart yearn for another soul and pursue it with reckless abandon.
And so I’ll go back, time and time again. For it is better to dream of you, than to never have you at all.
