Today’s Throwback Thursday is from the night before my birthday, March 14th, 2004. I was living in St. Louis at the time. I rarely remember my dreams, but I have had a few that felt utterly real, and I remember every detail. This was one of those.
I’ve had dreams like this before, where they’re so intense that it takes me several minutes after waking up to figure out whether it was actually a dream or not. I lay there, disoriented, and wonderig what the hell just happened. Once, it took me finally getting out of bed and going up the two flights of stairs to the bathroom to find a mirror before I could convince myself that I really am in my own body and the whole thing was, as they say, “just a dream.”
Last night was one of these.
I was in a prison cell. Concrete floor, steel door with bars in a small window of it, no window to the outside. There were other people in there with me, though I have no idea who they were or why we were there. The strangest thing is that the whole dream seemed to take an incredibly long time, during which absolutely nothing happened. It was cold, and the floor was damp. There was this horrible sense of waiting, but for what I don’t know. I tried to sleep, but could never fall asleep for more than a few minutes before I started shivering so much I woke up. Yes, I woke up in the dream, several times. It’s a bit like sleeping in a car, where you doze off then wake up, over and over and over again. I spent the entire night doing that, occasionally walking around the cell, stepping over other people also trying to sleep, just moving around as much as I could to get warm. I occasionally heard noises from somewhere outside the cell, doors opening, people sobbing, or whispered conversation that I couldn’t make out.
I felt some kind of weird detachment, like I knew there was fear and rage and even curiousity buried somewhere deep within me, but I had no access to them. I just felt numb, and empty, and the waiting. Always the strange sense that something was going to happen, but I had no idea what, and should probably be wondering what or preparing for it, but couldn’t. I got the sense I’d been there for a while and this night was not unusual, but couldn’t think clearly enough to even wonder about that. Just numb, and cold, and tired, and empty.
After what seemed like hours of this, after one of the several times I woke up and walked around, I sat down, leaning against one of the concrete walls (there was no bed or anything in the cell), I closed my eyes and felt myself drifting off to sleep, then a sense of flying, or having my spirit pulled through the air, quickly, like someone had a grasp of it and was pulling and there was nothing I could do. Felt fear for the first time then, but didn’t have time to contemplate it before I was snapped back into my body and knew I was back in my own bed, asleep under my blankets with my cats lying on top of them.
At that moment, I felt a sense of gratitude, and acknowledgement coming from somewhere, another presence that was being pulled out of the room the same way I’d just been pulled into it. I felt I’d reached a decision, or maybe that other presence had, for a moment I couldn’t tell which of us was feeling what. But I got the impression that a night of restful sleep had been restorative enough to regain enough clarity of mind to reach the decision and find the courage that went with it. And I certainly wasn’t the one who’d had a night of restful sleep. I slept there, happy to be find myself back home, but had to make sure I was really there so forced myself to wake up.
I feel tired and drained, as if I haven’t slept all night, and even now I’m half-convinced I really was in that cell with those other people, and somebody else had traded places with me and slept, warm and comfortable and safe from worry for one night.
If so, I wish them the best, whatever happens.