NYS #2: How Do I Know If I'm in My Own Dream?

saying goodbye to 2024 with a new dream.

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, it’s routine. Lather my throat in a clammy translucent coat of Vicks, turn the fan off, turn the fan back on, gulp water like I’ve never had any, rub my eye too much, kick off the shorts, wrestle the covers, and then fight to sculpt the previous dreams back into claymation.

When I wake up, I want to know that I’m in my own dream.

We live in New York so I won’t remind you too much of what that’s like: most of everyday is carrying loads upon loads of brown packages with the arms that have only grown out of my body into the elevator that smells of Sweetgreen. Conversation talk in the office is overwhelmingly motherly and lonely. Down the street, and a content creator video begins, a hot girl backs up to show us the outfit of the day, and a homeless man slugs across the street with a broken ankle and nails that rust like nails. Take the train, and a stampede begins, you may watch in silence or you may run without reason, but both ways lead into the next three minutes of unknown. You get home, to either yours, or another, and someone may ask you how your day was or they may not. You might be the most interesting person in that room, or not. You may just be someone who takes up a seat at a really long table, and that table could mean something down the line, but it also just may be a seat you merely occupied, and if you got up, it would be occupied again.

New York is filled with dreams, although rarely habited by those who own them. I caught my dream in a lottery. I caught my dream as it snagged to the bottom of a fishing rod, and it squirmed, and it squirmed—my dream came to me when I was asleep, and there are days where I wake up within it and days where I do not. When I am not, people do not ask about my day, and then I disappear at a really long table meant for the dreamers who think they’ve spotted the other dreamers. They do not see you, you are not major.

I don’t want to be your supporting character if it comes with the vices that I do not dream, I do not desire, or fantasize. I do not want to live in someone else’s dream, where gambles are made about the destinations of my dreams. I have become claustrophobic, overheated by hot breath that advises my dreams must be diluted, simplified—overtly smaller, weaker, and pit-stopped by the appreciation of someone simply taking a once-over at my dream. I do not want to live in someone else’s dream that is based on my admiration, I am always hopeful to get a drop of their dream, I am to be resentful if it never spares a glimpse toward me.

My dream does not live on the conscious of the job I work, because a job is finite, it is a chair that never moves, but mine flies, because in my dreams, I do too. My dreams are not black and white, indicated by the limits conditioned into me on behalf of a skin I obtain or a body that I wear, my dream is a feeling of color, and tomorrow I will be blue, and the next day I will be orange.

When I am not in my dream, I am suffering from sleep apnea. Pallid, egg-shell yellow, waiting for validation, waiting for figures in my life to read my work so I can keep waiting for validation. I am self-conscious and oversaturated with perception because people are seeing me, and they see that I yearn to tell the truth about myself even when I still have time to lie. I have never ran from myself—although I could certainly jog—and there is fear that my words could be sharpie’d out for the times it just might be too insulting, pervasive, and expressive about the industries and people glued to them who have built their dreams around crushing the existing ones of others.

I have felt what it is to not live in my dream, and oh my, is this city ugly, and not for its economy or its housing problem, but for its love language. We do not love enough—we simply could not have the battery to. We do not love enough, we do not pray for more room to. When I think about this place, I do not recognize it as one that practices love, but for astral projection and selfishness. How do women burn by a fire you walk by? How do you not ever just keep a dollar in your wallet—just sometimes—because another person might need it? And if someone you weren’t always close with sat at your really long table, why would you be so comfortable not asking how their day was? What makes your dream so sure, and others so predictable, what makes you so sure that your voice is the only one that matters, I find that kind of ego to be predictable. Perishable. Unacceptable.

A city of dreams, yes, look at the lights that glow, lay your eyes on a billboard that blinds you, it takes the power out of the shelters, it makes you compare to an ad that’s trying to sell you.

My dream is mine, because others may think it is to simply interview celebrities and pitch stories till five in the morning. My dream is mine, because others may think it’s job interview after job interview until I finally receive full-time salary I still have to do a co-pay for my eye exam. My dream is mine because while I sound nihilistic, and maybe never ‘happy enough,’ I live within the windows of my mind that look beyond what the world asks me to settle for. As this year, sometimes I was too much editorial than I was fashion, or I was too cooperative than I was self-sufficient, and other times I was too literary and not self-help enough, and I had all the big ideas, but never the leadership to execute them, or I was too cool and young because I wore braids with beads which meant I wasn’t corporate enough, and if I tried assimilating into corporate, I wasn’t projecting myself as a wild card, positioned to never stand out. And whether these critiques were indicative because my breasts are beige, and my speech is Black, my dream is still mine, because it lives within the clouds I can only jump into. My dreams make hot chocolate, plums harvest in the winter time, the sun go down, and the moon come up, and then reverse, repeat, reset, re-snooze, re-dream.

I have a billion dreams. Right now, I only know probably four of them. One involves going back to ballet class, and the other is writing a novel on the deviances of sexual conduct perpetrated by the men we deem too aesthetic enough for conviction. Most think my dream to discuss topics as dark as assault is only persuaded by the nightmares I’ve woken up from, but it is actually because I’m sure someone right now is replaying a part of a dream that was stolen from them. My dreams are not chronological because all of my ideas are simply just ideas, but I’m going to keep telling myself to dream from a hot air balloon because it is a privilege to have a brain like mine. When I am not in my dream, I am forced to think about the person to my left, and the person to my right—my dream becomes a sample of all my great potential but desire for opportunity, and my dream squeals by a pop because it was overly contrasted to my peers. Living outside of my dream makes me think I haven’t gotten far for what my age returns me with, it provides limitations, and it underestimates that God’s power does not overflow, simply drying up from a spout you’ve put a cup to a few times. And while I’ll learn execution and consistency, dreams are unteachable.

How do I know if I’m in my own dream? Since it’s the one where I love myself.

Undoubtedly. It does not make excuses for those who overlook me, those who talk over me, shortening my sentences or rephrasing them to ignite a spark they’ve lost—I wash my hands from those who think they don’t have to shake mine, who don’t have to listen, because I won’t force you to.

In my dream, I am the most beautiful girl. And I didn’t get braces this year, and my eyebrows were only plucked half of the time. But still I was the most beautiful girl. In my dream, I have more patience for myself when I stutter, or when I get anxious, since I’ll be joyful more than I’ll be anxious, because I’ll remember I don’t have anything to be sorry for. And I’ll live in this dream, hand tucked under an equally cold side of a firm pillow, legs bent in ninety degree, catching my herding sheep, saliva dancing down cotton, I will dream that I’m in this dream, and that dream is within another dream, and another dream, and another dream, I will dance to jazz music in the ocean.