The Blessing of a Forgotten Dream

It’s Critical We Remember Dreams, So We Can Be Grateful We Forget Them

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Last night, about an hour after falling asleep, I woke up very shaken.

There was a dream, I think.

It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real.

I was both witness and participant.

My perspective wasn’t first-person, but the intensity with which I felt the despair of the situation could only be described as psychic.

Two people had just woken up from a deep slumber. Their eyes wide, I perceived their confusion. They looked around, dazed. Either they had been put under intentionally, or had been rendered unconscious by some event. I don’t know. The sense I had was they had been “frozen.” Now they were unfrozen.

When they woke, however, everyone and everything they had ever known was gone. Long gone. Obliterated. There were just the two. One young man. One young woman. Nothing else. No one.

Further, the atmosphere of the planet had been changed since the time they knew and they could no longer speak.

My heart recognized some small consolation in their having each other, in their not being totally alone. But it didn’t feel like much when I understood they wouldn’t be able to communicate.

The landscape was barren. The air was thick with the dust of desolation. The two were naked, stripped of all that had ever clothed them.

When I woke in my darkened bedroom I was overcome by such heartache, fear, and dread that I forced myself out of bed in order to feel the ground beneath my feet. I walked to the bathroom and turned on the light to gaze at myself in the mirror, to remind myself of my own reality, of my (I hoped) identity.

I found myself wishing for the forgetfulness that comes when we wake.

The forgetfulness, however, took its time.

During this stretch, I continued to struggle with what felt like the anguish of loss. So empathetically aligned I was with these two young adults that I suddenly wanted all of my loved ones near me. I wanted to embrace them. No, I wanted to grasp them, hold them close to me, imbibe their very essence.