Sunshine in my dreams

Lately, I have been having this recurring dream. I’m sitting in the same place. I can’t move, but you keep coming and going. The sun is shining the brightest it has in the past couple of months. Yet it isn’t hurting my eyes at all. The wind is blowing cold and fast, yet it isn’t freezing. The plants have all grown new flowers. I don’t know if the season is right, but I have never seen them flower so brightly. The clouds in the sky are just right—not too much to hide the sunshine, but not too little to make the sun unstoppable. You would think that sitting in the garden now would be the perfect situation, would you not?

I don’t know if the dream is out of my control or if I’m simply trapped inside of it. Maybe I don’t want to leave the dream myself. Walking around me are these familiar faces; they keep stopping to smell the flowers yet never take a seat next to me. Yet every night, as I am about to lose hope in the dream, you come to take a seat next to me. I can’t say a word or touch you to see if you are there, but you look at me with confusion. As if I had forced you into the seat and you couldn’t wait to go back to smelling the flowers. You stop making eye contact, and soon I look away too. When I look back, you’re gone. You are no where to be seen, and so is everyone else.

Now all of a sudden, it’s raining. Thundering, all of the flowers close, and the wind freezes everything in its path. Yet now, I am in control. I can leave this bench and storm the garden without having to wait for anyone to appear. So I run with the wind, running like nothing can stop me. Eventually, I outrun the storm, and all I feel is a little drizzle. So I stay there for a while in the open, and the sun comes out with a different glow. Just then I wake up, and the dream ends. Every time my eyes close, the whole process starts again. Each time, by the end of it, I forget how beautiful the garden was at the beginning since the sun coming out at the end meant more to me.

I don’t know whether the garden was good for me or not; some days it seems like I like being in the storm. Yet every day I am sure that the sun feels better the second time. Despite all of this, I still cannot wrap my head around why I was trapped in that garden. But how does it matter now?