Unremarkable life

Iwoke this morning from a vivid dream.

The tricky thing about vivid dreams is that what seems vivid about them is usually difficult to describe. The vivid part is the feeling: the way I am completely in this dream and accept the reality of this alternate existence I am living.

In this dream, I was married to someone else. I was living a different life. It didn’t seem unusual to me, of course, because it was my ordinary life. But it was not a great life – and I didn’t know that, in my dream.

I was trying to hold together a struggling marriage. I was working at a job I didn’t like. There was nothing unusual about the circumstances. Nothing important happened in the course of this dream. In fact, it was because everything seemed so ordinary that it had such an effect on me. I was just living my life. I was tired. I felt I was getting old. It didn’t seem as if I had anything to look forward to.

I was worried in my dream. I was so worried about my failing marriage and my unsatisfactory work and the possibility that my husband would leave. I was doing everything I could to hold things together, and I could feel the strain at the edges. I was very stressed in this dream, and it seemed that stress was a big part of my life.

And then there must have been a sound outside, because I woke suddenly, right in the middle of the dream, and I felt a shock run through my whole body when I realized that this had been a dream. I was not living this life. It was a shock to realize that I had another life – a life that was so different and so much better.

It was morning. My husband, Peter, was already up. I could see the sun was up behind the shade. I stretched out on clean white sheets, and it felt like a miracle. And I promised myself I would remember this dream. I would write it down. I would do my best not to forget it.

Because it’s easy to assume that things are good because they have to be that way. What I forget – what I rarely think about, honestly – is how fundamentally different my life could be.

I don’t believe that anything is fated to be. I think there are infinite ways our lives could go, and enormous changes happen as a result of very small and seemingly inconsequential actions. I didn’t answer the phone. I went back to school. I decided to go on a date with a nice-looking man even though I was busy. I tried something I didn’t think I could do. Moments in time; they never seemed important in the moment.

But I woke from a dream in which I was living an entirely different life, and it was not as happy, nor as peaceful, nor as satisfying, as the one I am living. And when I woke, I was so incredibly grateful.

I lay in bed for a few moments longer. My cat, Felix, came into the room and meowed loudly. I heard Peter making coffee. I heard some noise out on the street, probably the noise that had awakened me. It was all so perfectly ordinary and, for just a moment, all foreign and wonderful. It was the life I got to live, and I promised myself I would remember. I would remember how incredibly lucky I am to be living this one particular, unremarkable life.

Till next time,

Carrie