a midsummer night's dream

I’ll bet a sleepy girl somewhere in the world closed her eyes last night and suddenly found herself twirling.

Twirling hand-in-hand, ballroom dancing with the love of her life. Instead of the worn out nightdress and sweatpants she’d put on before bed, she gasped to find herself draped in the most elegant, exquisite evening gown she’d ever laid her eyes upon. With a humble inward smile, she secretly felt like the most beautiful girl in the room… and believe me, it’s because she was.

She was slightly hesitant at first because everything felt a bit fuzzy and she wasn’t exactly sure who this mysterious admirer was dancing opposite her, but it was both unmistakable and innately obvious that this handsome boy in his striking tuxedo was the ONE. She couldn’t explain it but deep down she KNEW she was dancing with the man of her dreams. He smiled down at her and her knees instantly went weak as a myriad of butterflies threatened to explode from her chest. She couldn’t explain what was happening, she could only feel it. The atmosphere was glistening and the moment was so enchanting, she didn’t even try not to blush.

There was something delightfully familiar about this ballroom duet, this prince and princess swirling and swaying in time with the orchestra. The place was packed and the spiraling motions coated her peripheral vision in a vivid blur of brilliant light and color, but she only had eyes for her boy, and she couldn’t bring herself to unlock her gaze from his. They waltzed and whirled for hours it seemed until she observed a roguish grin sweep across his face before he winked and swept her through an empty doorway and out into the night air. What a stud. She found herself on an open courtyard balcony overlooking a lush green countryside which stretched out for miles in all directions. This was definitely NOT the city she fell asleep in. This was a palace, an old stone castle built right into the rocky bluffs and craggy cliffs of the hills which was silhouetted by the evening sun . She could barely catch her breath. What was happening? Was she in a fairytale?

Twilight approached swiftly as the stars beat down on the old stone veranda and formed pools of light that seemed to shimmer and ripple like tiny oceans. The mysterious boy took her by the hand and led her down a secret staircase that steered them down into the deep evergreen darkness below. The forest reached out to embrace the duo as as a nightly procession of crickets and tree frogs struck up a gentle chorus and serenaded the two lovers deeper into the enchanting arboreal realm. Only the sharpest of eyes peering down from the balcony above could glimpse their silent silhouettes steal through the flower garden, skirt past the goldfish pond, and then disappear into a heavy thicket of blue spruce and white pine.

The eventide deepened and yet she couldn’t brush aside whatever uncanny familiarity this dark, handsome stranger seemed to embody. What was it about this mystery boy? Had she known him before? There was something about his eyes… something enigmatic but beautiful. Was he a stranger from a distant dream? Was he a long-since forgotten acquaintance she’d met long ago? A sudden rush of adrenaline pulsed through her veins. This was beyond words. She marveled silently as they crept through the shadows like thieves, tunneling under the heavy evening hush that hung suspended above the treetops. Her pulse pounded like rising thunder and her eyes grew wide. Suddenly a strange sensation cascaded over her. She felt as though she were made for this moment. This dashing boy, this sense of romance and wonder all around her, this dreamlike reality. She squeezed the boy’s hand and felt him squeeze back.



She’d never felt so alive.

They pressed on into the thick undergrowth until at last the forest seemed to step aside and there in the center of a small clearing, they beheld the yawning mouth of a crystal cavern. The sudden sight struck her with goosebumps but not the kind you get when something frightens you… for this was real, genuine exhilaration. Her cheeks flushed with excitement. The jagged halo of rocks protruding from the hillside reminded her of a skeletal shark mouth, something you’d find in a museum. What was in this cavern? What was it doing here? How deep did it plunge? Where did it lead?

Suddenly the boy turned and smiled at her as if to say “shall we?” before motioning to the cave. Before she could answer, he leaned down and kissed her and in that instant, everything slowed down and she felt as though she could hear the stars overhead flicker and pop with supercharged electricity. The cloudy overcast pulled back and an endless celestial sky opened up above them. The world seemed to burst with energy and light. Still too surprised to utter a word, the tall handsome boy again took her by the hand in the darkness and whispered five words into her ear:

This is not a dream my love.

And then, hand-in-hand, they stepped into the black unknown, ready for anything. The ground heaved and gave way as the mighty sound of rushing wings split the silence like thunder and suddenly they were falling. She felt as though she’d stepped into another world in which gravity had no grip over her. The forest above, the castle in the bluffs, and the deep green countryside all seemed to uproot and plunge into the blackness after them as the great shark’s mouth swallowed them whole. She felt like screaming but not from panic or foreboding, rather a joyful giddy shout of pure bliss. Everything was beautiful and she was perfectly happy in this frozen moment, lost in an unknown world where above all else, she felt what it was like to experience total and overwhelming joy. She closed her eyes and tasted the moment. So this was what falling in love felt like.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself back at home in her bedroom, everything exactly as she’d left it except for the wide smile on her face and the racing of her heartbeat.

Reminiscence

Dizzy.

That’s how you feel when you run into a significant other you haven’t seen in a long time. A bitter avalanche of icy memories plows into your chest at breakneck speed, stealing the very breath from your lungs. Gasping for air, there’s really no use fighting it; the blow is instantaneous and it’s overpowering. Your eyes land on this person, your heart immediately stops dead, your knees go weak and you internally panic. You force yourself to walk over, but before either of you say hello, you’ve already got an endless amount of things you secretly want to say and an equally lengthy list of questions you wish you could ask.

What affection the two of you once shared was absolutely beautiful, consequently causing any unanticipated meetings thereafter to be twice as awkward. But as everyone always reminded you, life has a way of operating, God has a mysterious way of working, and sometimes things change without a moment’s warning. Even after it was all said and done, it’s still hard to imagine how things could’ve ever evolved from “always” to “never” in what seemed like a single dramatic heartbeat.

Months and months later, you run into this particular person unexpectedly and the realization hits you like a brick wall. The pain is still there. It’s almost as painful as the night you said goodbye, and what if there isn't any goodbye. Enough time has passed to con you into thinking you’ve begun to heal, and of course you probably have, but then you see this person and suddenly those old familiar aches begin to hurt all over again. You were finally beginning to mend after what happened, the relationship withered and ended, however dramatically, but the moment you lock eyes with this person you once shared so many dreams with, your stomach turns and a bitter taste fills your mouth. You can barely breathe. Half of you aches for things to be the way they once were, the other half longs to forget the whole thing ever happened. Regardless of your role in the conclusion of the relationship, it left you shattered and bringing it up after all this time would only pour another dose of potent heartbreak for both of you.

So there you are, standing face-to-face, unsure of what to say aside from the typical small talk jabber. A myriad of emotions swirl through both your heads but they only make former lovers more confused. Maybe you hug an awkward I-haven’t-seen-you-in-forever gesture, but that familiar mixed scent of perfume and cologne makes it even more impossible to know how to act, brief as the impending conversation inevitably will be. You just can’t stop thinking “things will never be the way they used to be” and that’s what hurts most. You both know where your identities lie, Who ultimately claims your hearts and where your fortresses are… and those things are truly what matter most, but this unforeseen meeting is still severely painful and there’s no denying that. It keeps you both awake for nights.

This is me being honest. I tossed and turned a lot last month. I thought about someone so much it was unhealthy.I had to escape.I ran.But that's a story for some other night. I would be doing grave injustice to my trip, and a special someone, if I weren't to dedicate a blog to it. But all said and done, I feel much more relaxed now to have finally let it out.

So here’s hoping I fall asleep easier tonight if I send a simple message out into the void:

Girl,

I still care about you. I think about you all the time. But things are different now.I’m praying for you constantly. I want so badly to know you’re being taken care of. I wish you the best in life, not because you’ll surely find it, but because you deserve it. You deserve so much.

I just wish you knew 'You are NEVER alone'.

Dip.

Insomnia

The clock in my laptop turns to 12.01 am and I realize,that 
                                    I CAN'T SLEEP.

Its as simple as that...Its been like this for about couple of months now.No matter how much I tried over the last couple of months to sleep at night I couldn't fall asleep, before 3am, barring a few nights(in which i was exceptionally tired).

this is ME

It’s a funny thing. Even now I often find myself wide awake staring at the ceiling, and when my play-list runs out, it seems as though all I do is toss and turn. However, a wry irony lurks within such sleepless nights by which my restlessness ultimately becomes the fuel for all sorts of dreams — consciously wakeful though they may be.

Some nights I close my eyes and drift off somewhere between dreams and reality — into subconscious territory where I’m not exactly wide awake, but I’m not sleeping like a stone either. It’s a middle ground,between consciousness and slumber, an abstract reverie where I can see, hear and feel everything around me but cannot control what happens. During THESE nights I must prepare for anything because there is no telling what can happen.

Sometimes I’m yanked back into reality by the most nightmarish threads of illusion, dreadful night terrors that leave me out of breath with a lead hammer pounding inside my chest and a cold sweat. Sometimes I feel myself fighting out of fear, clawing my way through a veil of restless sleep that covers me like a film, yet I cannot manage to slice my way through the thin layer of leathery nightmare. Sometimes I wake up missing my old school days, gripped in a painful swirl of miserable heartache — as if time never healed those scars,and I end up missing ASB a lot more, all over again.

Of course this is all very unpleasant information and is thus, a rather depressing note to end a blog entry on.

However, I delight in the mere fact that being a dreamer often exempts me from the rules of reality and her consequences, be they good or bad — and I love how dreams propel the mind of the dreamer into imagining what the world might be like if such dreams were in fact reality. It’s a compelling thought and it keeps me on my toes. I love that.

All this to say — when my heavy lids finally surrender to the weight of any given day’s worth of living, breathing, working, doing and being, I savor the moment with a vigorous (though slightly reticent) taste in my mouth because, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s truly no telling what might happen.

Reality is a lovely place but I wouldn’t want to live there.