Easy Dreaming
The pull that I feel is
inevitable, magnetic.
It guides me toward new life.
It is an escape from my present reality.
It is a perpetual cycle of life and death,
birth and rebirth.
I submit to it.
And thus, I am reborn; again and again and again.
I believe we call them dreams:
prophetic premonitions that shift our perspectives,
little miracles that change us overnight,
a source of unlimited new beginnings.
Every night, I am spirited away to a different world.
Some are good.
Some are bad.
Whatever the case, I adopt the identity of a different person.
I am me, but
I am not me.
Perhaps I have manifested an alternate version of myself—one that exists in a faraway realm. Such is the duality of the land of dreams.
I enjoy my time here
because there is no limit to the amount of times I can press the reset button.
All I need to do is wake up.
I don’t have to worry about making mistakes.
It’s a comfortable routine: reset, restart and then replay.
It is a coping mechanism
because nothing seems to go right in the real world.
Police brutality is excused
and people are suffering on hospital beds.
Youths are being separated
from their loved ones, their futures
at the borders.
Many are dying
and many more have died.
Yet politicians turn a blind eye and
the rich don’t care and
the world is on fucking fire and
I am worthless
because I am powerless.
Completely powerless,
worth nothing more than the numerical values found on my report card.
Pitiful.
For a long time, I did not
and could not
do anything.
I relied on the land of dreams to soothe me
and sing me a lullaby,
sing me to sleep.
I wanted, needed to calm these swirling thoughts
before they became irrepressible.
Yet I became uneasy
at the thought of my own complacency.
Was I simply going to accept that things were meant to fall apart?
Was I really going to trick myself
into believing that nothing could be done?
No.
I have no good reason to
because I need not rely on dreams for new beginnings.
Reality is no fairytale
—it is no dream
but it is worth fighting for.
It will always be worth fighting for.
And so I learn.
I learn to create opportunities for myself
and see every morning as a fresh start
because I have always had it in me.
I fight on.
I change the little things.
The way I
tie my hair,
greet my family,
talk to friends.
The way I
live,
laugh, and
love.
It wasn’t easy.
It was as difficult as difficult can be.
But
I have gained so much from the journey
and I have so much more left to gain
and by some Godly miracle,
these little changes have snowballed
into big changes;
major changes.