A dream

Last night I had a dream. I was in a home; the home was indistinct, I don’t even remember what it looked like, but I do know that it was distinctly a home. The home had many windows; there were windows in the outside of the home and also windows in the walls inside. In every window frame there was a pane of crystal clear glass. And as I stood in this home in the middle of my dream, there was a man. This man was nondescript, and in my dream, this man’s presence shattered the windows both on the outside and on the inside of the home. In my dream, I would wait near a room, hoping that perhaps this glass would withstand him, but it never did. Around and around the home we went, waiting and watching the glass shatter as he passed by. The man never harmed me, I only felt the pain of the shattering of each pane of glass. And I saw that the man wasn’t malicious, his stance was that of one in distress, almost as though he too wished the windows would not break.

I didn’t wake up feeling confused by this dream. It is rare that I would ever remember a dream, much less understand it. But this dream I understood. The night before I had grieved the loss of a hope I had carried with me; the hope involved a specific man, a home and a clear vision of life with him. The night before I had once again sat in the presence of this man and saw that it was different this time; this time I knew that there would never be a home or a life with him and this time I didn’t try to hold onto the hope of one. I simply enjoyed his presence apart from the windows, and let them shatter as I walked away. And later that night, as I considered the man and the hope of life with him that was no more, I cried.