Half fiction and half truth like all stories, it begins in a dream. What was happening? I have very little idea. Then I’m in terrible physical pain. It’s so bad I can’t stop myself from arching off the bed. I think I’m awake in my room at night but the grip of the dream world is still so tight on me I can’t be sure. My spine stretches and contracts beyond my control. It’s as if a knife has been slotted under my right shoulder blade, twisting in and out. Then the sea of my subconscious begins to churn again, psyche lost in the foam. I am in some kind of fluid. My breath squeezes and pulls against it painlessly. I can’t tell if I’m wet or not, the fluid is neither warm nor cold. I hear my father saying to me as a child “If you are ever lost underwater, follow the bubbles to the surface,” but when I look, the bubbles are rising towards a brilliant light and I fear that it is the light of death. I am not ready to die so I stay completely still and hope I am not missing out on the great adventure. This is the first time we meet.

“Hello darling, I’ve missed you.”

The next morning I am very certain of very little. I remember the pain of waking up, once maybe twice, and how concentrated it was. I do not remember the events of the dream. I know they were as real as this life, I cannot forget that. I pick up my phone.

“Good morning,” I say politely.

“Good morning, what’s up?” My mentor’s voice is scratched by time and distance. 

“I had such a strange dream last night.”

“Oh? Do tell.” She sounds curious and a bit concerned. I have not been doing well lately.

“I don’t really remember anything that actually happened in it but it was so different than any dream I’ve ever had before. I don’t know how to explain it. It was so real. Like, okay, if this world is one half of something I feel like in the dream I touched the other half of it, whatever it was.”

“That’s so exciting!” She really means it. She believes the realm of imagination can slip more readily into the realm of fact than fact would have you believe.

“I hope I have another one.”

“I’m sure you will, I’ve found that once you tap into a deeper flow like this you don’t lose it easily.”

“I guess we’ll see,” I say that a lot nowadays. That morning I tell a few more people. I fear if I leave things, even real things, inside my head they become thoughts then nothing. Dreams and memories and wishes are all alike within me. 

I have never had great luck with lucid dreaming, perhaps it’s for the best. I don’t know if chaining the ephemeral to my consciousness is good for either of us. Sometimes I lie in the dark, in meditation or prayer, imagining the dream coming back to me or a new dream or anything divine. Maybe I haven’t been consistent enough or maybe I want it too badly. Regardless, life continues uneventfully and I let go of control. I have stopped attending my lectures. I still go out when I’m invited. I try not to withdraw from people the way I used to. A few months later my high school ex-boyfriend texts one day asking to catch up. It’s taken a few years but my scabs have hardened enough so we agree to go for a walk down by the creek the next time he’s in the city.

“You’re different than I remember,” he says, kicking a stone into the water.

“How so?” 

“You used to say ‘whatever’ all the time but I knew you didn’t mean it.”

“And I don’t anymore?” 

The stream rushes past. 

“No, you still say it, but now you really don’t care.”

“I guess I don’t.” 

We are walking against the river’s current. Back in time. What he said doesn’t hurt me, I’m not sure if it was meant to. 

When I called my best friend about the dream he had said “I just don’t know why you have to use all this spiritual language,” maybe if we’d been in person it would’ve gone better. 

“It’s what makes sense to me, I feel like all the other words don’t even get close.”

“There are lots of ways to talk about something, you know that, you talk about it all the time.”

“Not with this.” I knew I was being stubborn.

He said “You’re turning into someone I don’t recognize.”

That’s what had hurt. But then the central heating whirred to life somewhere in the basement and I became aware I was alone. I hung up without a goodbye. I had always felt that other people’s lives were fixed paths I weaved through; nobody ever became someone different than I had expected. They followed their futures like hunting dogs on a scent. After the dream, I was that same way. I began to understand my path had branches and that my only job was to pick the strongest one and hang on.

That spring I met Luna at a dinner party. We made out under the table after she took my sweaty hand in hers and said my fate line was strong. She was from all the cheap and sparkly parts of this world, always free, always forgetting plans, and friends with everyone. We often sit in her kitchen drinking herbal tea and talk about the universe, how everything is connected and there is still so much we don’t understand. I have never told her about my dream. Neither she nor her friends mind that I don’t buy into Tarot or astrology as much as they do. I still have the deck she gave me on my bookshelf for special occasions. I say “There is very little I believe in these days” and they nod; we’re all doing what we can to keep the magic alive. Sometimes she asks me what I’m thinking about and I don’t know what to tell her.

I cycle in and out of tripping, meditating, and fasting. When the messages go quiet I try to find them in ads on the subway, in old songs. Sometimes I hear a voice at night but it’s too far in the back of my mind to be someone else’s. Sometimes the voice loves me, sometimes the voice talks about how it feels to drown, how it doesn’t have to hurt. I listen because it reminds me of you more than anything. I wonder if you hear it too. 

Just before summer hits full stride Luna and I and all our friends go to the beach. They find a secluded spot where we can get high enough to lose our suits. I know it’ll be too cold but the water is calm, and their cheerful calls beckon me.

It’s not hard to commit, to shock your body with a quick plunge into the deep, the challenge is getting permission. Each step I ask do we go back? and wait for an answer. The last few birds pass overhead towards their Northern summer and I wonder if loneliness can reach them up there or if it is tied to the earth. Surely they know what it is to be alone, surely. 

By the time my body agrees to be fully submerged the group has swum far out of reach. I watch familiar heads bob up and down as rain begins to dot the surface of the lake. I pray it continues until the world is full again. Then I am inside the waves. I turn about, letting myself acclimatize, drifting until I no longer see the sand below me. My chest keeps me afloat as my legs and arms sink. All the air sounds are muffled. The rain grows louder and I try to forget about this world. I could be anywhere, I could be anywhere. I close my eyes and hear your heartbeat deep and slow. 

“Don’t open them yet.” I can feel your chest rising and falling beneath me, neither wet nor dry. I breathe you in. Our bodies are pressed together gently, your chin resting on my head. You are too warm to be dead, thank God. “I didn’t know if you knew the way back,” you whisper. Your voice is like many voices chasing each other around alcoves and secret corners. I wish I could follow them. I ache to hear them in ecstasy, to hear them enraged, but there isn’t time. “Listen to the rain outside,” you continue, “and the wind in the trees.” It’s coming down in torrents now, tinny on the roof. Beyond you, the room smells like dusty fabric and old smoke. My lungs begin to burn. I press my ear to your heart, it beats with grief far beyond what I have known. I long to stay with you here but the pain in my chest says I am not ready to die and I listen. You knew it would be this way, I cannot say goodbye.

I come up by the shore, further East than the secret place. As I rise out of the water a mother hurriedly leads her child away from me. I have forgotten the shame of being naked. I walk back to my friends, to their damp towels and socks. Luna and I smile at each other. I lie down beside her and feel the weight of my body once again. She puts her arms around me, pressing my head into her chest. Her heartbeat is clear and bright.

“Your love will never be enough for me,” I say.

“I know,” she says, “that’s how you know you’re still alive.”