"El sueño de la vida"

I had a recurring dream when I was younger. It wasn't as if I was dreaming at all. I recalled this room, sometimes a warm colored bedroom like the one I'm in today. Sometimes a hospital room, with lights that weren't pale; bright and warm, blinding. Other times, the room was a place without windows, covered in blur. And most times, the dream was a feeling of my body over the bed. Feeling the mattress. The sensation trapping me inside the dream. Unable to wake, the room became smaller. Slowly feeling as if I was being pulled from my skin; the room suddenly smaller. Beyond, only void and darkness. The light getting farther. Yet it didn't feel like my body was being grabbed; it felt like I was sinking. Even if it wasn't me who sank, it was the room that was sinking lower. I could see myself, my figure over the bed. Yet I couldn't see well, and it spiraled as I was pulled upwards. Teared from my own body. Never-ending, never reaching darkness. Simply lingering in that state.

It haunted me as a child. Despite there being no monster, it was the removal of most senses and only the feeling of being stolen from my own body that terrified me.

As a child, I couldn't comprehend what I was dreaming. It mixed with other childish nightmares. These recurring dreams, almost identical to one another, similar to other children's, piled up and constantly happening.

My brother dreamt of falling off a building and never reaching the end; I dreamt of awakening only to be met with the terror of all of my teeth slowly falling, one by one.

But these nightmares were all similar. For my brother, there was a body dreading reaching the ground, and for me, there was a mouth afraid of no longer being able to hold teeth. Each of them made sense. They were fears of survival, of unrealistic nightmares warning us that our bodies were here, and that they too were afraid of pain.

But my dream didn't. My dream was the removal of the body itself.

I was so desperate for answers that at some point I started to confuse the dream with birth. I remember I watched a video that spoke of it. That there could be people who remembered the feeling of air upon their lungs like a horrid rasp of pain and fear, recalling seconds of their birth, their mother, the blinding lights of the hospital room.

After all, I too dreamt of a hospital room, but I wasn't aware if I had been dreaming of it since before, or if I had started to dream of it after watching that video. Like I was convincing myself that this was a memory rather than a dream.

So it must have changed after that. Then I was dreaming of the hospital room, warm and blinding. The light blinking, my view from below as it started to spiral again. Suddenly I felt as if my stomach was having my intestines shaken. Like I had just awakened from a nap into the world above me in a burst of violence. But I could only see the room shrink, as if rather than coming closer, it was moving farther away. Getting removed from my brain, a thundering feeling inside my skull, my view going blind. The room fell into darkness, and this time, it disappeared. Then came nothing, horrid and scary.

I made up a story that I had seen stars in that darkness, but I couldn't recall. When I awoke, I didn't know what had happened. Had I dreamt of something else? Had it ended? Was it simply another nightmare?

I didn't want to think of it anymore.

But it didn't feel like birth or arrival, and if it did, was it really that awful?

Despite my efforts to ignore those thoughts, the dream stayed. It lingered for so long I could notice it before it occurred, knowing when the room would suddenly shrink. I hated it. The tingle inside my brain; fingers slowly pulling out nerves.

I didn't want it to occur; it simply did. That sensation in my eyes, the view becoming longer, the world appearing farther, as if, despite being inside my own body, I was being replaced by something else, something calmer, colder, incapable of thought.

Me. That person with a name, she… Was she replacing me? Was it odd that it felt as if there were two separate beings, the one who could see and the name by which I was called? That there was the sister, the daughter, and the mother, and then me?

Those moments confronted me with a truth I didn't want to admit, one that even now I can't tell is a truth or simply a fear. That perhaps the soul was something in and of itself. That perhaps I had to remember my own name because it wasn't actually mine.

I made that question hide in the back of my head, and slowly… the dream stopped occurring as often as it did, until it seemingly disappeared. But even though the dream ended during my youth, the sensation didn't.

It would continue, spreading. In those moments, walking or remaining still, talking, holding, or even lying down, it didn't matter; something seemed to hold my body, sinking it below me even though I was still awake.

It became so frequent, and I wanted to complain about it so much, that one day I asked my brother. He said it was simply the body regulating itself. That it happened when I was feeling too much.

Simply a body that needed to regulate its brain by releasing that dissociation.

But the feeling didn't seem to be only that; such a simple explanation couldn't possibly explain something so confusing as feeling yourself removed from your own skeleton. So, though it calmed me, it also felt oddly plain.

Was the feeling of sinking beyond, of being pulled backwards, of hands over your shoulders forcing you upright, just that? The mere idea of a brain incapable of unrestricted emotion trying hard to bring you back to reality? Was it really so simple? A mere measure for survival? A simple effect of chemical reactions inside the brain that we understood as a response to a stimulus? Was it really something so natural?

I couldn't accept that. I wanted to believe in the odd; not magic, but belief. There had to be something to the dream, to the idea of having to remind myself, time and time again, that I was actually me, and that I was alive, and that I was trapped inside my body. Forever unable to view the world through outsiders' eyes, forever unable to grasp another's words, another's heart; forever unable to dream what others dream. Feel what others feel. Hear what others hear. And yet vulnerable to being removed from these very chains.

I didn't like that feeling, not the oddity of having to remind myself I was alive, but the feeling of merely having it. Why did I need to remind myself I was?

My mom believed it was normal.

“Everybody goes through that,” she said.

She told me she felt the same things. That there was a moment of stillness, of looking around the room, whether it was crowded or not, whether there was light or darkness. Day or night. There were these moments in which… she had to remember she was alive.

“They will get rarer with age.”

That was her explanation: that I just had to wait.

Despite that, it didn't end. It accompanied my fear of death, because… could it be death? Would my soul leave my body in that same manner, stolen away from all sensation, feeling it all sink down to nothing until only darkness remained? What came afterwards? What did it mean?

And if I was recalling the sensation of death… why did I remember it?

I didn't know. The dream never ended, just as it never began. It was a mere sensation. It didn't matter how it happened or when. It simply happened. It was there, in the silence, inside my brain like a growing seed, embedded within the bone as if tying me down, just to one day release me.

But it was a mere sensation, wasn't it? That was meant to reassure me, right? Everybody felt out of their body sometimes. Everybody had to remind themselves they were alive, that they were actually breathing. Surely, people were having to learn once again how their lungs worked.

And yet, why did it feel like there was more to it? Why did it feel like a memory and a reality at the same time? Had I dreamt of it for so many years of my childhood that I had started to confuse it with a part of it? Was I starting to forget that it had simply been a dream from a time in which being alive was still something new, something I had just experienced? From a time when consciousness and memory itself, and the concept of others, and me, had started to appear. Was it simply that?

Then why couldn't I let it go?

Maybe I was just holding on to it, fearing that admitting it was simply a reaction would mean I had spent so many years… holding on to nothing.

I tried to tell my friend about it. He didn't explain or try to tell me, like my family did, that it was normal, and that because of that, I just had to accept it and allow it to happen, and that eventually I would grow out of it and stop dreading the feeling, simply accepting it whenever it came. What he said is that it didn't actually matter.

Whether it was real or not, we are here, stuck inside our bodies, stuck inside our brains. The concept of who we were, where we came from, where we are going, and what's the soul? And what's the body? It doesn't matter because we will never actually know.

He told me I should just let it go.

I understood where he came from. He himself struggled with identity, with his body and his mind. He himself was escaping his own addictions, and he admitted he too sometimes felt what I felt. But even though I could comprehend the view from which he slowly started to get better, I couldn't actually accept it.

Yes, I would probably never know. I would probably never know why it had happened. Or what the dream meant. Why had it stayed like a lingering memory? Why was I reminding myself that I was alive and part of my body, time and time again? Of course, I would probably never actually answer those questions, even though I could explain the feeling to somebody else. Even though there was a concept, a scientific answer to what I was feeling, I could never actually know why it had happened to me in the way that it did.

In that sense, to not be believed would have been easier. It would have permitted me to make it mine, to invent whatever answer I needed to the question, and try my best to make up what it meant. But I was believed, perhaps not entirely, but partly. And not only was I believed, but I was also being told, over and over, that my reactions, and my feelings, and the sensations were normal.

I was meant to feel reassured. I had to. I know.

That's what they say when you cry, that it's normal. That's what's meant to calm you, or at least validate what you are feeling. That grief is normal. That pain is normal. That it's just your mind, your body, life. You.

But it didn't reassure me. Because despite nobody actually telling me I was lying, or that I was making it… they were also not actually listening to me.

We had all felt it, or at least, all the people I asked had. We had all known something similar. Maybe not the dream- maybe that was mine- but the sensation of having to remember who we were, that we had a body, that we breathed, and that we were real.

On some level, all the people I asked had once remembered they were alive.

But they didn't sink into that feeling as often as I did. It lingered, even if the dream had ended, the sensation had not.

Had it grown? Was that the reason it had appeared even though I was awake? Was I actually not getting better, but worse?

I tried to tell them that it was growing. That I was feeling worse. They said it was the birth, the baby, that I was scared because of it, unsure of how it would go, how she would come into the world, if I would die, if she would live. They told me that I had to rest, and it would all be fine.

I hated to admit that it worked, but only for a moment, and it probably was because I was sleeping so much less after the birth. Spending so many hours inside the nursery, too concentrated on reality, and the life of my infant, to even for a moment think. There was a comfort in that too. I was free from having to remind myself I was alive; free from having to escape the touch of those hands pulling me backwards, free from fighting them to get back to my body. Free from the dream. Because my child's cries were enough to keep me there, tied to reality.

My years of freedom, too messy and too loud, constantly consumed me with the fear of losing the life that had come, to even concentrate on who I was. Feeling more alive when I felt less like myself and more like a subject to the role of the mother I needed to be.

I was me, yes. But I was being me because I had a purpose, something to keep me distracted from the truth of what I actually am.

Now that it's lonelier, that they've grown, that my body is older and life is far less loud, it has returned.

It's not new, it's not different, it's there. I can feel it almost at all hours; whenever I rest, whenever I'm here, it follows.

My husband says it's the years, that we are older, and that the fear of death is starting to creep in. Our bodies aren't young anymore; they will never be young again. We will only get older, so perhaps he is right, and that's why it has returned. Because it's closer.

It's self-regulation, chemical reactions, the fear of death creating and mirroring what we think death is, even if it could be different than this.

I just keep going back to my childhood years, because despite my age and my memory becoming foggier, I can still perfectly recall that dream.

That sensation, that view, that bed, that feeling inside my body, my soul.

I believe there is an afterlife. We both do. All my family did, and I tell myself my mother is waiting for me in that place. I'm not afraid of the darkness; I'm not afraid of the nothingness; I'm not afraid of what I don't believe in. It's the sensation I dread.

It's that the dream never showed me any answer; it merely gave me the moment and then disposed of the rest.

Do I know? Is there a part of my body that recalls the aftermath of the dream? Will I awake inside another room, inside another body, one day, and suddenly recall that I was here?

Will I be dreaming of my own death?

Maybe I'm just making it all about the end because… I'm closer to it. My children say to stop saying that, and I agree, I should. Death is not something to be called, merely accepted. So I don't tell them this because they would think that it's normal, or worse, they'll be afraid.

So, on this lonely morning, I don't know what the dream meant. I don't know why I was dreaming of it in my youth. I no longer believe the simple explanations, but nor do I know if I should believe my own. I have not found a single answer that satisfies me about what I experienced back then, what I experienced today, in this instant, and what I'll experience tomorrow. If tomorrow is to come.

This sensation only grows, and now stays in my body and in my bones. This from which I could never escape, no matter how much I grew. They were wrong. It lingered, it worsened, and eventually, it's settling. Waiting for something.

I suppose… only time can tell if it was real, if one of my assumptions is right. If life is a dream. If death is a memory.

I'm bound to die one day, aren't I? I'm bound to leave my body.

Why am I even questioning it?

It's obvious. It should be…

I'm not imagining it.

I'm alive.

Yes…

I'm alive.