Surreal dream wakes, shakes me; which is reality, which is dream?

By David McElroy · October 31, 2018

I’m suddenly awake just after 4 a.m. and I don’t know why. I’m half asleep but I have a desperate need to remember what I’m feeling and what just happened.

Wait. Did something happen? Did it really? I guess not — not entirely — but something seems so real. Maybe surreal is the word. My brain is half asleep, but my heart — spirit? soul? — has something to say.

No, that’s not quite right. It has something to feel. To share. What is the feeling? Quick, before it’s gone. Find the words. What is this? What happened?

I woke up confused. I was turned around on my bed the wrong way. I was confused about where I was. I thought I was somewhere else, but where?

Everything around was dark but there was diffused light. The kind when there’s fog everywhere and the air is heavy. I sensed danger. I was afraid. I felt shame for being afraid. I was in danger, but I was worried about her. She was the one in mortal danger. She wasn’t going to die, but her heart was being consumed. The beast was consuming her — and then she would be gone.

Even though I’m awake now, I’m still falling back to sleep. I don’t know what I need to say, but something needs to come out. I have no idea why.

When I became re-oriented enough to know where I was, I picked up my iPhone — from the far corner of the bed where it charges every night and serves as my nighttime clock — to see what time it is. But when I touched the button to light the screen, I found an email.

In my sleep — in my dream? in half-waking state? I don’t know — I had typed a short email to her. I was relieved that I hadn’t sent it. I don’t talk to her anymore. I can’t. It hurts too much. But there was the note. How can I type full sentences — complete with punctuation and proper capitalization and AP style — while I’m asleep?

I’ve been writing in my waking state — and maybe in my sleep — for so many years that it’s the only way I know. And now I’m wondering why I was warning her.

I suddenly recognized this place. That creature lived in the tunnel up ahead. He scared me. He hated me and he wanted to kill me. He didn’t want to kill her, but what he wanted for her was worse than death.

He wanted to consume her. He wanted to take her soul. He wanted to take the last parts of her that hadn’t been eaten and he wanted to erase them from existence, leaving a changeling which looked like her and acted like her, but had no soul or joy or even the ability to feel pain. Much less love. He wanted to consume everything that made her real. He wanted to replace her heart with stone. He was evil.

I don’t know why I feel so shaken. I feel out of control. If I’m honest with myself, that’s one of the things I fear most. I fear being out of control and looking foolish. Yet here I am floating through raging emotions as I fight drifting back to sleep and I feel utterly carried away by something I can’t control.

I don’t want to look at this. I don’t want to feel this. I want the fear and need and love to be gone. But why did I say “love”? I have no idea, but that’s what the feeling said. What is this I’m feeling? And why is my heart pounding as I drift between wakefulness and sleep?

The beast knows I’m here!

He sees me, but he’s not coming after me. He’s laughing at me. He wants me dead, but he wants me alive right now. He wants me to hurt first. He wants me to know he’s consumed all of her and taken away everything pure that she was. That gives him satisfaction in a dark and evil way.

It’s cold and the fog is thick and humid. Her heart is fading. If it stops, she will be nothing but stone. All will be lost. Then the beast will try to kill me, after I know she’s taken — consumed and replaced by something which can’t feel or love.

Love? Wait. What does love have to do with this? What good is that against the beast? I don’t know. I do something stupid and ridiculous.

I step out of the fog and into the flickering light at the mouth of the entrance to where the beast is. She’s inside, beyond him. She’s fading. He sees me step forward, but he only watches.

“I love you,” I say with a shaky voice.

I feel something shift in the ground beneath, but it’s nothing much.

“I love you!” I shout it this time, my voice stronger. “Do you hear me? I love you and I’m not giving you up!”

The ground was shaking now. Everything around me was changing. The stone of this place — mountain? castle? whatever — was changing. It was glass now. It was brittle. It was shaking.

“Do you hear me?” I’m shouting. The beast looks panicked. His world is starting to crumble. I’m talking to her, but I have no idea whether her heart is too far gone to hear me. Maybe she’s consumed already. Maybe it’s too late.

“I love you! Don’t let him consume you! Please, hear me!”

The glass is breaking. The entire place is falling apart. What was an impregnable stone fortress a moment ago is brittle and breaking. The beast is afraid. He’s trying to fly off, but he’s leaving her behind.

The ground is breaking underneath me now, too. Everything is clear glass. I can see through everything — like a magnificent crystal palace breaking apart — but it’s falling apart too quickly. We’re falling, but I have no idea where I will land — or if there’s anything left of her heart.

I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know why I’m awake. I don’t know why I want so desperately to remember these feelings. Part of me wants to go to sleep and forget. Even though it’s a bit cool in here, I’m sweating on the sheets.

I don’t need to think this time. I just need to feel. I don’t need to plan. I just need to experience whatever is coming out.

What is this rushing through my heart and mind and soul like the blast of an emotional explosion? Why am I feeling this?

I know it will be gone in the morning. That’s why I’m struggling to say as much about it as I can now. I need to remember. I need to feel this. I need to know … something.

I look outside my window, but I see nothing. There are no stars or moon. It’s cloudy, so it’s pitch black. There’s no light to save me from my feelings. I could turn on a light switch and bring myself back to rational reality — one where I’m not forced to feel all this — but then I will lose something which I can’t bring back.

I will sleep now. When I wake, it will be light outside. The day will be just as usual and everything will return to normal. I might remember that I had a strange night, but the feelings will be gone.

It’s the feelings I need to hold onto. I don’t know why. Even as I say this, I have no idea what it means. I just know the feelings might save me. Might save her. That doesn’t even make sense. But I saw the glass shatter. The beast is afraid of love.

Sleep comes now. I hope peace comes with it. I close the curtain on this strange night. This strange experience.

But I know I have to hold onto something of it. I have to give it away. I have to express it. Even though I don’t understand it. In the power of this love, there is the hope of redemption. I have to guard that hope in my heart.

Now I sleep. I hope there’s peace.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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