The Dream That Remembered Me

The first time the world bent sideways, Courtney thought it was exhaustion. The second time, she kept quiet about it. By the third, she had started to wonder if maybe the cracks in reality were invitations—not accidents.

She hadn’t been sleeping well, and even when she did, she woke more tired than before. The kind of tired you can’t stretch out of your limbs. A bone-deep fatigue that whispered: You’ve left pieces of yourself behind. Somewhere.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep that afternoon.

She only meant to lie down. Just for a minute. Just until the ache in her chest stopped sounding like thunder trapped in her ribs.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a place that felt like memory and magic braided into one.

The sky overhead was cracked porcelain, threaded with rivers of soft light. Trees curled in on themselves like question marks, and the grass beneath her feet shimmered—not from dew, but from fragments of forgotten thoughts.

It was a dream.

Except not the kind she was used to.

In this dream, she wasn’t watching. She was remembering.

Ahead of her stretched a winding path of soft, violet stone. Each step forward hummed underfoot, like the earth recognizing her weight, adjusting to her presence.

The first sign that this place was alive was the breeze—it carried her name. Not shouted. Sung.

Courtney.

She spun around, but saw only shadows dancing in the folds of the forest. The air smelled like lavender, thunder, and candle wax.

She started walking.

Time was syrup here—slow, sweet, sticky. She couldn’t tell if minutes passed, or hours, or lifetimes.

The path led her to a lake shaped like an eye. At the center of the water stood a small island with a weeping willow whose branches touched the sky. Beneath its canopy sat a figure cloaked in moth wings and starlight, plucking petals from a flower made of glass.

Courtney hesitated.

“Come,” the figure called, voice crackling like firewood. “You’ve been here before.”

She blinked. “I have?”

The figure tilted their head. “All dreamers return. The ones who fracture. The ones who flee. The ones who forget how to feel.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Courtney said.

“Then why are you here?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

Because she was tired? Because she was afraid? Because no one in her real life seemed to understand what it meant to carry all of yourself at once?

“Because I don’t know where I end anymore,” she said at last. “And where the versions of me that everyone needs... begin.”

The figure rose and extended a hand. “Then come. Let the dream remember you.”

As soon as she touched them, the world shifted again.

The lake drained into clouds. The willow branches rewound into spirals. The glass flower cracked—and spilled a memory at her feet.

Her childhood bedroom.

She stepped into it like a museum exhibit.

Posters on the wall, stuffed animals in neat rows, a journal with a lock she’d forgotten how to open.

And there—on the bed—sat a younger version of herself. Nine, maybe ten. Wearing mismatched socks and eyes too old for her age.

“You never listened,” the child whispered.

“I didn’t know how,” Courtney replied.

“You did. But the world told you it was weird.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m listening now.”

The younger Courtney blinked slowly. Then smiled.

And vanished in a shower of paper stars.

Room by room, the dream peeled back layers.

She stepped into her teenage bathroom, still fogged from secrets she used to hide in eyeliner and late-night phone calls.

She danced in the living room where she once told someone she loved them and meant it—and was not loved in return.

She sat at a desk where rejection letters piled like bruises.

Each room held emotion like gravity. Heavy. Specific. Unavoidable.

And yet—

None of them broke her.

Each time she re-emerged, a new piece of her memory became more vivid, like regaining color after a long grey spell.

She saw people she’d lost. And versions of herself she thought were gone forever.

She passed through a field of mirrors, each one showing a reflection that wasn’t quite right:

One too polished.

One too broken.

One trying so hard to be digestible she barely existed at all.

And finally—one that was simply herself.

No mask. No filter. No apology.

She stepped into that reflection. Not through it. Into it.

And everything changed.

The sky darkened to velvet. Stars blinked in time with her heartbeat.

A storm rolled in—not of rain, but of emotion. Memories and moods churned in the clouds.

She stood at the edge of a cliff, hair whipping, arms outstretched.

A voice—familiar and strange—spoke beside her.

“You are not a dream,” it said.

She turned. A being stood there, its face a kaleidoscope of her own expressions: anger, awe, grief, wild joy.

“You are the dreamer,” it said. “But you forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“That you shape the story. That the version of you others can hold... is not the only version that’s real.”

She felt her chest open, not physically, but energetically. Like a lock had clicked open on the cage she’d been sleeping in.

“I don’t want to be who they need anymore,” she confessed.

“Then be who you are.”

And then came the unraveling.

The storm above split. A waterfall of golden light poured down, soaking her skin. Her body dissolved into beams—no pain, no fear, just release.

She became the breeze. The dream. The thought.

And then—

She gasped.

Eyes open. Back in her bed.

But this time, she didn’t feel the familiar crash of waking.

She felt integration.

Her phone buzzed on the pillow beside her.

A message from someone she hadn’t heard from in months:

"You popped into my head last night. Just wanted to say I’m proud of you."

Courtney sat up slowly. Pressed a hand to her chest.

She was still here. But so was the dream.

The scent of lavender and candle wax lingered in the air.

And in her hand—

A single, folded note. Written in her own handwriting.

“You are allowed to be real, even if they only see the dream.”