Fever Dream

Somehow I know it’s a dream. I know it is too good to be true—too satisfying; too perfect. I don’t know the context or the reasons; I lack even the influence of any real life experiences that might be similar. But it feels real anyway.
I am curled on a soft bed, a mattress on the ground and all white white white. I am white too, wearing a white sundress of soft cotton.

It’s warm where I am; so warm I’ve kicked away the sheets and they are crumpled around me, seeming to glow in the bright but gentle light of the room.
I seem to glow too. My skin is soft and golden and my hair is long, tumbling strands of sparkle on my shoulders. I feel its soft brush behind me as well, tickling below my bare shoulder blades, just above the low back of my dress. It is a deep, rich brunette--my hair is--amber liquidity, gleaming like the hardwood floor.
I twist some of the silken strands around my finger as I assess my body, my golden form, lying relaxed and half uncurled amongst the swaths of pale fabric. I am comfortable with the shape of myself; for once there does not seem to be too much of me. I can see slight shadows indicating the angle of my hip bone, and the way its line leads into my thigh lets me see a bit of muscle tone there, as though I’ve been feeling well enough to take walks. My scars are gone, as if they’d never been. I feel completely beautiful, like I could let someone really see me—let myself be studied; analyzed—and not fold in on myself to hide some flaw.

It matters little how I feel about myself, though, because at this moment the door to the right of the mattress opens. Laughter from the next room bounces through the door, the gleeful voices of children and some relaxed, over-loud tones of adults who have for once let go of cares.

And then he enters, muting the laughter by closing the heavy door. He stops, looks at me. The admiring, hungry look he flashes leaves little doubt that I purely and totally captivate him as his eyes flicker to my face, then briefly away and back—unable to resist but still attempting respect.
In life, I’ve never seen him before. But in this dream-world I know him well; better than I can remember knowing anyone. His smile is tight and detailed, accenting sharp features beneath shadows cast by his rough-cut hair. It is woven through with yellow and brown hues, and the way the light slides down careless locks makes me think of two-toned silk—golden-amber; an eagle’s eye.
He wears white also. The fabric of his loose, draw-string pants is cotton like my dress, but of a denser weave.

Tendons are defined on the tops of his bare feet as he steps quickly around to my side of the mattress. He kneels down beside me and I don’t realize how wide I’ve been smiling until I have to rearrange my mouth to receive his kiss. It is enthusiastic, like he’s truly missed me in spite of only having been apart for the night and first half of the morning. His sun-warm skin carries scents of saltwater; of hot sand and curry. He’s been out exploring while I overslept.
Our laughter mingles as he tumbles into the ample folds of my sheets, dragging me with him while I play at protest.

Then his eyes catch mine, locking them fast. I don’t remember their color—brown, hazel maybe. No, green. Or blue? They could have been gray. Maybe they were something like the color of the slightly-tinted glass of a van’s back passenger window, like the one I used to stare out of as a child on the long drive to Tennessee: stable and constant, yet changing in hue and dimension depending on what lay beyond them.

They are bright; sharp and penetrating. For a moment we are frozen while the intensity of his gaze burns away my layer of humor and I try not to let him see the hint of reality that now colors my resistance to his hold; try to pretend that the pure, violent severity of his love hasn’t shaken me a bit.

In the morning when I woke from that dream, over a year ago, I couldn’t remember what it was actually like to be in it. I remembered the facts of the feelings; I know I felt this way or that. But I couldn’t remember what those feelings felt like. They didn’t stay with me, even in those few minutes of hazy blue between dream and reality. The second the dream was over, a new feeling came over me and has stayed with me ever since. It was vague and unnamed for a long time, just an uncharted valley, but recently I think I’ve been able to put words to it. It has mostly to do with the first part of the dream, the intense contentment in the simplicity of being.
It was the absence of that feeling, upon waking, that brought to the surface a truth that has now grown enough to be realized:

I’m tired of being real; tired of being human. I don’t like it. I want to be a book character, or a painting, or a sculpture-girl made of copper all shimmering and bronzed. I want to be something that is abstract and distant. Something that is so beautifully false it lacks any of my imperfect characteristics: the tangles in my hair, the dark circles under my eyes, the flaws in my skin, the imperfections in my form, stretch marks, scars.
I want to be something unchanging, frozen just how I was in the Before Times—the times before lupus. I was so much more vibrant—full of life and laugh—and I was prettier then.
But Before was so long ago, I suppose I really don’t remember what it was like. Trying to remember fails, just like striving for the soul-memory of that sunwashed dream, and so much has happened since then.

Every now and then, I try to remove myself from my context. I try to look at the way I am and the way I live, day to day by each moment, as if it weren’t already defined or as if I was watching someone else. As if I was thirteen again, with this blank-slate future and normal, ultimately inconsequential expectations of what life might throw at me. Like, ‘someday I might break a bone’, or ‘someday I’ll be independent and complain about taxes while drinking overpriced cocktails with all the other independent people’.

I’ve been trying to get that feeling back, especially lately with this wall in front of me. There are other things in front of me, too, but my eyes hurt too much to look at them. And I’m seeing double a little, so without really being able to read or make art or watch TV for very long, I’ve been spending a lot of my time getting to know this wall.

It’s smooth—cool and soothing for my sore eyes, but it is textured too; something for my gaze to catch on once in a while, allowing me to avoid the extra strain that comes from trying so hard to see something in nothing.

I try to find a comfortable position to settle them, comfortable enough to relax, but I can’t find it, not even when they are closed. I feel claustrophobic, and empty from the large percentage of activities my eyes forbid me to engage in at the moment.
I try, I do; all the time I’m trying and I’m trying now to try, to try not to panic as I wait for hours, longing to fall asleep.

Because I still hold out some hope for a good dream once in a while, even though for the past few months all I’ve had are nightmares.