The Dreamer

People live to dream dreams, whether big or small. It’s the sort of obligation that makes us human, and separates us from the beasts. The paradox of it all lies within the question of what defines humanity, an aspect of life which deems a species strong, capable, calculating, yet riddled with holes of weakness and vulnerability. These gaps in our confidence are filled with insecurities, doubts, and plugged closed with those indiscriminate pangs of guilt and the metaphorical corks of ridicule. It is a difficult and complex plight, that of the dreamer. One who seeks hard fought opportunities and seemingly impossible realizations. One who envisions the broad spectrum and the polar differential of reveries and nightmares. One who sees angels and demons so clearly within themselves.




There are accomplices to the dream, criminal in instinct, feeding from the promise of free prosperity and sheer hope; praying to a faux-martyr under the guise of faith. Intangible, invisible, indescribable, and yet somehow completely decipherable, is that whisper in the back of your brain that screams believe when your critics wants you to fail. When the co-conspirators urge you into the darkness with sweet voices and empty promises, meanwhile letting go of your hand one shaky finger at a time. Remaining in the light just close enough to see your shadowy figure in the distance without letting it disappear. Day turns to night turns to day, and the dreamer doesn’t truly sleep; like a vacant movie theater, the film reel still turning, click-click-clicking in the desolate room, images still flashing on the screen. No one to laugh, gasp or cry in the theater seats; creating short stories and building small relationships that no one will see.




No, the dreamer never sleeps, but for those frozen moments flashing in scattered illustrations of what may never be. And so eventually some of us let dreams go; they float away into the wind like grains of sand to collect on someone else’s doorstep like simple debris. But nothing is simple. Straightforward, uncomplicated, plain. These are nothing but the aftermath of the loss, a clean acceptance of what is instead of what can be. People live to dream dreams. But it’s a wonder what to latch onto once those dreams die.