Dreams matter to me. Although I still don’t know exactly
what they are – my psyche’s way of dealing with emotional issues, peeks into my
doppelgangers’ life from alternate universes, or nonsensical hodge-podges of my
thoughts and experiences – they have proven to be my greatest source of
inspiration as well as my number one confidants and secret keepers. Dreams are
indiscriminate; they will show you things you don't want to see and things
that’ll leave you wondering what sort of sick desires you've been harboring
your whole life. Whatever craziness stirs you in you sleep at night (or day),
dreams are some reflection of you. The reflection could be clear-as-day
accurate, seemingly indiscernible from life, or distorted fun house mirror
reflections, or reflections of a you from a different time. Either way, dreams
come from your mind – your unique, twisted, beautiful mind – and there’s no
denying their connections to our selves.
Last night . . . Or more accurately, this morning, I had a
dream of a past that I hang on to, a life previously lived that I still shed
tears over. In the dream, my parents are not the divorced, ambivalent, and
hesitant acquaintances that I watched them become, but rather they were still
in love (or at the very least, some illusion of love), and still happily
married. My older brother and I are not torn-apart siblings missing each other
over distance, but still the argumentative but playfully teasing Dynamic Duo.
Father gets news of a house in Havana whose ownership he never surrendered. We
take a trip to our island country as a family to see this new, old childhood home
of mine. And when we arrive, it’s as if we never left. Like much of my country,
our home is frozen in time; the walls are decorated with framed photographs my
four year old self, of my brother’s 1st birthday party, and Mom and
Dad’s wedding. The bedroom my brother and I shared is bursting at the seams
with 90’s memorabilia, toys, children’s clothes, and memories. Even the layer of dust that covers everything and the dying guava tree in the backyard feel like old friends. The more of this
long-forgotten home I explore, the younger I become, until I'm four years old
again and I come across an abandoned triplet of kittens taking refuge in my
white oak wardrobe. I am filled with the joy of a child – pure, harmless,
incorruptible – and my dream ends with my 6 year old brother and I playing with
the kittens.
I've never woken up feeling more heartbroken. Every fiber of
my being longed for those days, those simpler days when being happy meant
something more. When love was alive and prosperous, when loneliness was a
foreign concept, and my brother and I were free to explore and bicker as
siblings do, never thinking we'd someday be separated by consequence and 1,000
miles of empty space. And, somehow, I
long for the unbridled innocence and warm fuzziness of a kitten, or three, on my lap.
Dreams dissect your true self, exposing your very essence,
and projects it in the most hard-hitting ways. Pay attention to the ones that
rip you open and leave you crying in a corner; you could be trying to tell
yourself something.
