Day 5: Dreams

This letter is supposed to be to my dreams. What dreams? The dreams that plague me every night? The dreams of who I wish to become?

Dear D,

Sometimes you eff up my day. Sometimes I wake to find myself alone and uncomforted in the darkness. Sometimes you show me things I can't unsee: gory, bloody images of distruction. Some nights you taunt me with something worse- with images and touches, traces of warm fingertips across my skin. I am not sure which is worse.

As I lay here in my sleeping bag, I can help but to wonder where these dreams live when I am awake. Do they linger just outside my vision, waiting for a moment of weakness to position themselves in full view when I am least expecting them?

As for you: my dreams, ambitions, aspirations, where did you go? Didn't I ever want to be something? I have always known I want to have money, want to take care of my family, but didn't I have a passion? When I was 7 I wanted to be a paleontologist, but my love for digging up dinosaur bones faded. I cycled through career paths: author, cartoon animator, tap dancer, marine biologist, but when I got to high school, you left me. I resigned myself to being a wife and mother. To popping out a new baby every year while my husband brought home enough money for us to survive.

I took an acting class. Acting became my therapy, my catharsis. My acting teacher believed I had potential. He gave me a way of of the life I had settled for. He set up an audition for a prestigious college for the performing arts. I got in and spent two years there, enjoying myself but detached from the lessons. I graduated with no plans to pursue a career in any of the performing arts. I decided to become a journalist, but hated taking the classes. I went back to writing plays, books, songs, but have no way to build a career out of that.

I feel lost and abandoned by you, Dreams.