I wrote this on July 14 of this year after a particularly vivid night, but I thought I could share it now.
I dreamed the other night that I was engaged. Most of my dreams have a general theme, and this particular dream was no different. It had pieces of reality in it- a weekend away at a family wedding, my real relatives were present and accounted for- and particles of complete nonsense- I was fighting, literally fighting, Jennifer Anniston off my fiancée and driving cars off the tops of buildings. And like most dreams, the details of the dream slip away as each hour passes since I’ve woken up, and yet I tried desperately to grasp onto them; like grabbing at a run-away kitten, I trap it for a second, just enough to be covered in hair but too far to actually rub my face in its fur. Most dreams I have include a storyline, characters, twists and turns, like watching a good but odd movie in which I happen to star. Sometimes I see myself from the outside, sometimes from my point of view. Characters will randomly swap out and be played by different people, right in the middle of the story, like a bad soap opera. Everything makes perfect sense at the time, but becomes more bizarre as I try to recall the story or tell it to someone else.
Only one time, when I was little, do I remember things being significantly different. My family was vacationing at the beach, and one night there I dreamed I dove into the pool at the hotel; the odd part was that I could feel, in my dream, the way it feels to dive into water. I could feel the sudden rush of cool, without bubbles like when you just jump in, or an ease of water around you if you walk in, or sprinkling heat like in the shower; it’s a sudden, body-shocking rush of pure cool around you, as pure as the air around you now. And I could feel it in my sleep; I could feel it so vividly that I woke up thinking that I had sleepwalked and sleep-dove into the pool and was surprised to find that I hadn’t.
The dream I had the other night was akin to my diving dream, except it was an emotion, several emotions, that I felt so much that I thought I was alive. I felt it like you can feel the change from humid to rain misting in the air and you know that you know that it’s now water, something you can grasp in your hand. In the dream, I had forgotten I was engaged until I noticed the ring on my finger. It was silver or white gold, with a small, round diamond in the center and one round turquoise stone on each side of the diamond. It was so simple, and so odd, but it was mine. And as I looked at it, it realized that I was engaged, to be married. The sense of peace and happiness I felt was pure and simple, with the colors from peace and joy flowing and blending into each other, until they filled me. It was the steady flame of a candle in me. It was like pouring beautiful pink-red water into a crystal basin. It was like a note from a perfectly tuned piano that echoes through your body, until your chest pulses with the immeasurable rhythms of the note. It was a perfect, perfect feeling that filled me and I understood because I didn’t understand it and I didn’t care. It was the simplest and most amazing emotion I can ever remember, and it was but a dream.
Once upon a time in high school, the girl at my table in science and I had a conversation about the one thing we wanted to do in life before we died (now that I think of it, an impressively complicated topic for two fifteen-year-olds). She insisted that she wanted to be a mother, and however much I considered her position, I could only understand it as it applied to her. I have never understood the drive to be a mother or the amazement that people find at bringing forth new life; it is a reconciliation I have had to make with myself for being so different from almost all other women I know in my Southern upbringing. I want to be a mother, but I want it like I want to visit Europe or graduate with a doctorate degree; it’s desirable, but if I don’t, I won’t feel as if my life has lost some luster. Even eight years ago, I knew that the one thing, the truly, truly one thing that I desire with a physical ache to have is to be married. I could list the reasons why, but it would sound as if I have calculated this top position logically. I haven’t. Like the feeling I had in a dream, it simply is. In my calculating, pre-psychologist childhood mind, I always thought that people dreamed what they feared or what they wanted. I haven’t really changed my mind on that position, but I have never believed in it so much until now. I dreamed a dream that was more telling of myself than I could ever say or write. Though it was but a dream, please don’t tell my heart- it wants to be married.
