Farewell to Dreams

Many artistic people are inspired by their dreams. It makes absolute sense. The dream world is full of impossibilities and infinities; it is the very essence of human creativity and art relies on that. There are even people who practice the belief that dreams are extensions of our personalities, our hopes, and our wishes. So, what does it mean when one doesn’t dream, or only dreams in banality? What does it mean when one wants to live creatively, but in the perfect place for it to happen, they only get blackness?

I have always wanted to pursue creative endeavors. Even being a Neuroscience student now, I only pursue that field because the brain is astoundingly beautiful. In addition to that, I still want to write a novel, a novel that would be full of metaphor and quiet emotion. Unfortunately, my dreams (or lack of) want to force me into bleakness. They say everybody dreams when they sleep, we just may not remember them. That may be true, but even the dreams that I do remember are sadly mundane. Most of the time, I wake up from blackness, but those special times when I do remember something, they might as well have not happened. My nightmares consist of me waking up too late for an exam review and my dreams find me finding an extra pencil when I thought I had forgotten one. How absolutely, terrifyingly boring.

What does this mean for me? As a child, I was full of creativity. I constantly doodled and spent hours in imaginary worlds. I loved reading fantasy novels and writing my own fantasy stories too. This reflected in my dreams as well. They were fun and exciting and scary, but it’s not the same anymore. Now, when I doodle, all I end up with is spirals and squiggles, I stick to reading classical fiction, and when I write, it only ever ends up as a personal fiction or a personal essay. I can’t get outside of myself in my dreams and I can’t escape myself in my real life. How do I move on from here when I spend every night in a void?

Maybe it is only because I’m in a transitional state in my life right now. This is the first true time I’ve ever really embraced my emotions and didn’t try to run from them, this is the first time where I’ve ever really been truly open to another person, and this is the first time where I’ve really tried to think about who I am as a person. Perhaps it’s good that I am spending more time for myself than hiding behind imaginary powers and landscapes, but I have the urge to create something that is not about myself. I want to leave my body and create something outside of it, but it has become impossible. Well, for right now, I’ll be working on myself some more. This is my farewell to dreams and the hope that they come to visit me again someday.