alreadyknewblog

I used to think everyone daydreamed the way I did.

Doesn’t everyone drift away sometimes?

Doesn’t everyone imagine a different life while sitting in traffic or folding laundry or staring out a window?

Mine were a little different.

The star of most of my daydreams was my wedding dress.

The same wedding dress I had panic attacks trying on.

The same wedding dress I had panic attacks wearing on my wedding day.

My mother and sisters outside the dressing room.

My daughters outside the dressing room.

Everyone was excited.

Everyone was celebrating.

And I was trying to figure out why I couldn’t breathe.

Years later, that dress would reappear in my imagination.

Not at an anniversary.

Not in a vow renewal.

Not in a happy memory.

In my escapes.

In my mind, I would put the dress back on.

Then I would leave.

Sometimes it was the garage.

There was a squat rack out there that could hold my weight.

Sometimes it was my car.

The one place I was usually alone.

Sometimes it was the balcony of the condo in that beautiful little lake town in Idaho where we had our wedding.

The same balcony that should have held beautiful memories.

Instead, it became the setting for some of my most recurring fantasies.

At the time, I thought these were comforting thoughts.

I thought they were beautiful.

They brought me peace.

They brought me relief.

They brought me calm.

Whenever life became too heavy, I could visit them.

Just for a moment.

I could imagine stepping away from all of it.

The fighting.

The disappointment.

The fear.

The loneliness.

The feeling that I was failing everyone, constantly, in every way.

I could imagine silence.

And the silence felt merciful.

Years later, I told a therapist about these daydreams.

I described them almost casually.

Like old memories.

Like stories.

When I finished, she looked at me and said:

“Wow. Those are some really dark dreams.”

I remember feeling surprised.

Dark?

That wasn’t how I experienced them.

I experienced them as nothing but serene.

She asked me how they made me feel.

I answered honestly.

“Calm.”

“Safe.”

“Controlled.”

“At peace.”

Now, looking back, I understand something I couldn’t understand then.

They weren’t dreams.

They were horrible nightmares.

Not because they were violent.

Not because they were dramatic.

Because they were evidence of how much pain I was carrying.

What kind of a life makes disappearing altogether feel peaceful?

What kind of marriage makes silence feel safer than tomorrow?

What kind of loneliness convinces a person that absence looks like relief?

The nightmare wasn’t the fantasy.

The nightmare was the reality that created it.

My brain was doing the only thing it knew how to do.

It was trying to protect me, to save me.

Trying to offer me an escape hatch, an exit door, a light path out.

The tragedy is that it couldn’t imagine a future where I left the marriage.

It couldn’t imagine a future where I found love.

It couldn’t imagine a future where I felt safe.

It couldn’t imagine a future where I found and embraced myself.

So it imagined endings instead.

Today, I understand something that younger version of me didn’t.

I wasn’t dreaming about death.

I was dreaming about relief.

And relief eventually came.

Not through a garage.

Not through a balcony.

Certainly not in a wedding dress.

It came through leaving.

It came through terrifying bravery.

It came through building a life I no longer needed to escape.

The harsh juxtaposition is almost funny, really. 

Those dreams felt beautiful then and are completely horrifying now.

For years, I mistook them for peace.

Only later did I realize they were cries for mercy.

It’s amazing how differently dreams and nightmares can look depending on which side of survival you’re standing on.