Beautiful Nightmare

“It is not good that the man should be alone…” Genesis 2:18

Last night I dreamt. I dreamt a shining, beautiful nightmare.

I dreamt of a woman. I can recall no face, no features, nothing much in particular actually, other than a general impression of her. But I do recall one fact vividly, burned into the walls of my memory like a flash-burned shadow remaining after a nuclear explosion. She loved me.

Not the me that might be. Not the me that should be. Not the façade I place before the world, or the quiet lies I mumble to myself in order to justify my own existence. She looked into my core and loved me.

And then I awoke.

Now I think I have some small idea of what it is for an imprisoned man to dream of freedom; for a starving man to dream of a feast; for a blind man to dream of colors he has never seen. The magnitude of the ecstasy during the dream pales before the raw power of the crush of reality upon waking.

Now it is 5:30 the next morning and I cannot sleep. Probably because part of me fears to dream and then to wake. Probably because another part of me fears not to recapture the dream at all.