🍿 In Your Dreams

"What is your dream?"

I used to have very vivid dreams and nightmares. I used to wake up as if my dream had really happened and was affecting my whole day: tired if the nightmare had me running, down if it was tragic, or giddy if it was exceptionally fantastical. There was even a time I woke myself up because I was laughing.

But I can't remember the last night (or day since my schedule is flipped) I had one of those. I don't think it's my schedule because even when I was working at a BPO with the same schedule, vivid dreams still happened fairly regularly. Nowadays, I sleep tired and wake up a bit less tired, no random adventures in dreamland.

In the movie, the children were trying to solve a real-life problem through their dreams. They read a book about the Sandman and, believing - or rather needing - him to be real, they found him after fighting through Nightmara. He gave them their dreams and happy ending, roll credits, right?

Nope. It's the age-old "be careful what you wish for" twist.

One of my most recurring dreams is about two women: my wife and daughter. At first, I never saw their faces. Then the older woman would take the face of whoever I fancied at the time and the younger one would be her carbon copy, only younger. And then it just stopped.

At the movie's climax, Stevie fell into a coma. She chose to stay in her dream because, in there, she had what she wanted: her parents happy together with her in the middle. She was happy... for a moment.

Just in the past couple of years, a lot of bad things happened. I lost my mother. I reconnected with a friend and then lost her again. I lost a few more people I thought I'd always have in my life. I lost my job. I was (and still am) asking myself, "What's left to live for?" Having found no real answer, I have since been wishing I could sleep and never wake up.

Like Stevie, I'm stuck in what I asked for and what I thought I wanted. And it all turns out to be a prison of my own wish.

Unlike Stevie, who had Elliot, her father, and her mother to save her, who do I have? Who will come to save me?

It's melodramatic, but I can't think of nor expect anyone. I can't pinpoint the exact moment but, at some point, I got my wish. Something in me slept and never woke up.

The only note I took down while watching the movie is the opening line: "What's your dream?" For most of my life, I would have had an instant answer: becoming an astronaut, a writer, a CEO, having my own family. Right now, I don't have any. I mean, I still want some things but I don't call them "dreams" anymore. I call them "goals" and I write down the steps I need to take to reach them. If I can't, then I forget them.

Because that's what adults do... right?