Dreaming in Gray

There was no rhyme or reason behind which dream I stepped into each night only that the door I was presented with was never my own. At times it was an intrusion to be the audience to a stranger's subconscious desires and memories that are set on repeat for eternity in hopes that the real-life outcome were to change from recorded history; at other times, a privilege to feel love in its purest form: unspoken and untainted by shame and self-doubt.

I could recognize when I stepped into a dream of the same individual more than once as faces, themes, and places became repeats of evenings prior. Intimate encounters with the same celebrities and holidays with the same family members played on a loop that I could nearly recite as if I was holding the script in my hands. I have fallen in love more times than I can count but one has stood out above the population as a favorite experience. It was several decades ago and she was a candy striper volunteering in reception as I visited a friend or family member, I never knew the context of the visit as the dream never divulged more than what memory held on to. Her hand lingered as she directed me, "straight, to the left, and third door on the right." She was welcoming and everything around her shimmered like her temperature ran several degrees higher than the space that surrounded her body. Her laugh was rich and lifting and her smile shed light on a radius of several feet but if I were asked to place the color of her eyes, I would not be able to as it was none that I could associate with a name outside of home.

Moments would flit in and out showing me progression of her falling in love with me as much as I fell for her from that first meeting in the hospital. The wedding was the next detailed experience that would fill the scene, taking over for the prior as colors bled together and furniture reshaped itself to mold into the memory; sometimes changing as memory can never accurately recall if the place settings were Rosenthal or Noritake and if the colors were deep navy or yellow. She met me in ivory and lace and was the only part of the dream that contained concentrated vibrant detail that attracted the attention of every part of the dream. Chairs would pivot to face her, blurry faces of guests followed her steps as she inched closer to where I stood under the alter, and the music playing as if heard under deep water-garbled and seemingly offkey-kept time to her movements. This world revolved around her in this place and I was a slave to experiencing the manufactured comfort of adoration experienced by another.

I willingly walked into this cycle at every chance it was presented. I chased and craved living as another to experience the sense of purpose that comes from a love so deep, but good memories come with a cost-a balance to their existence. The reel started the same way: in the hospital with the bright shimmering warmth but the change was instant. There was no montage of blissful experiences and first dates; there was only expanding salt flats of gray with wisps of experiences that used to play. Echoes of joy previously felt that teased of what used to be. Even wilted and decaying remnants of prior memories were exempt from this new setting. If despair was the name to the image I was a passenger to, the expectation was to feel cold or the slightest chill in contrast to the memory embrace experienced before, but it was the absence of feeling. What was first thought to be mirages on the horizon were just representations of the vague and detached nature of this space. Every inch was blurry and just slightly out of focus-that no amount of ocular straining could rectify. The absence of temperature and focus begging for dissociation and separation. 

Soft, timid steps could be heard that were made louder through the silence and crunching of the dead earth. The new memory played and I was now in line of a new processional with the world's weight in my grip and on my shoulder. Blurred faces appeared at my peripheral without expression standing as sentinels to the barren nothingness surrounding the solemn march. I don’t know when we stopped moving or if we were never moving to begin with but now I watch the weight be lowered, lowered, lowered until there is nothing in sight to track. I remain rooted as the presence keeps me in place and threatens to tip me over to follow and chase whatever could remain of the life that descends beneath me-leaving me to seek the area around me to locate what semblance of light and color that I could. Whether manufactured or not, it would keep me from tumbling.

Sleeping was difficult after this in fear of feeling, seeing, living that emptiness again. When rest became inevitable, it was a welcome sight to open the door of the dreams I could not recognize, ones that I did not come to fear and loathe. I experienced new people, new memories, new love, but none as vibrant. It was a stay, but nothing that stays lasts. The night was unavoidable, I knew, but wished I could have been lucky to not see the door again. It had changed. No longer was this a door I longed for but it was splintered, weathered, and aches with movement. I don’t meet the candy striper in the hospital any more. Any color that may have existed is vacuumed into the gray and bland landscape. Squinting does not get rewarded with clarity but adds to the muddied perception. I have returned to what I have feared most. I am welcomed by nothing and to nothing.

This was no dream. The warmth was gone.

This is my worst nightmare.