Chasing a Dream

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This is a piece in a growing series of mine about dreams and lucid dreaming. In these stories, I give first-person accountings of some of the dreams that I have each night. Identities and locations can shift around with little to no warning and the narratives don’t follow typical plot structures. For more of these stories, click here.

I wake up with the sense that I’ve lost something huge. It’s nothing I can put words to. I can hardly even conjure the faintest image. I just remember realizing that I was dreaming and recognizing that there were four figures that seemed almost to hover around me in space. I could tell that they were of great significance to my life. But it was vaguer than that… they may not have been figures at all. They might have been pillars— or scenes — or events — but they were archetypes that seemed to represent the entirety of my life. I remember being stunned by the realization. I remember hoping that this memory would return with me to my waking world.

All I know now is that I held within my hands something deeply profound and let it slip through my fingertips. Sometimes when I’ve forgotten a dream, I can just accept it and try again the following night. But this was a dream worth searching for.

I lay my head back down and try my best to invite back the imagery. After a few minutes of searching the drowsy darkness of my mind, I see images…