Pipedream - Chapter 1 - Incomplete

The first thoughts of my day are usually dreams. I can feel them inside of me, like woodlice in a stack of slumbering logs; they run through me, gnawing at the corners of my days and turning them strange.

These aren’t dreams of the future, no Martin Luther King Jr. visions of children holding hands with other children. These aren’t dreams the way people mean when they say, “I will achieve my dreams,” though sometimes those ideals make appearances too. Occasionally, I’ll thrash my arm into a wall of preteen laughter: my own unfortunate high school experiences merged with what I hoped an adult spin on things would look like. These are some of the worst.

So, in the predawn moments between sleep and wakefulness, I walk in a sort of sculpture garden, populated by the warped facsimiles of days gone by and the insect artists of dreams that made them. And warmth. And light. Pinpricks of stars nose their way through the blinds, drip into the pool of green around the alarm, and suddenly, I have ears, I have sound, I have real thought that belongs to me. And that thought mainly says one word:

“No.”

A hushed thing, one of brief defiance in the wake of despair. And so I become a swing of legs from the side of the bed, a sigh, a pair of rubbed eyes.  I've always clung to this time between sleeping and waking, as if it were some other place into which I could escape. But it's really just time passing. And why should I be so fixated on the passage of time? Days and nights? Months? Years? Maybe this is some vestige of my cataloging habits from the journaling days. Either way, it's tiresome. I convince myself in sleep each night that the morning will be something new and different, but instead it's only the same ring spinning over and over.

Brushing my teeth gives me time to wonder if I'm actually depressed. It's been easy for me to pretend these things were normal or temporary, but I'm not happy, and I should be. I have a nice house with an intact roof over my head, delicious food, a family who cares about me, supportive friends, all of the things that make people happy, right? But there is an overwhelming sense of dread hanging over me constantly.

At all times, I'm dreading something. Here I am now, tying my shoes, dreading the possibility that I'm out of oatmeal. Really. This is a real concern for me. When there turns out to be oatmeal, I'm dreading the cold outside and the frost on the windows. On the commute, I'm dreading all of the prep I need to do during my first hour. On weekends, I dread Monday; on weekdays, I dread ten o' clock when I'll have to inevitably go to sleep. Thats not normal, right? Shouldn't I be going to bed content? Pleased with the activities of my day?

But rather than focusing on dreams, desires, delights, all I can fish out of things are disappointment, despair, and this same dread. I always feel like there's something I should have done or could have done better or more. It's not a problem of positive thinking, because I'm much more positive than I once was, but trying to look forward to things instead only serves to remind me of all the time I'm wasting in the present.

And presently, I'm not only wasting my time, but the time of 27 bright young minds, all stuffed full with their own dreams and desires and delights, as well. Now that might explain some of the dread.