There was something wrong—really wrong—with that. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t seeing myself in the mirror, it’s that I knew, deep in my bones, that I wasn’t looking at a mirror at all. But a window. I was peering into something, through glass, into the other side, where unknown things lurk.

I looked down at my hands and they were unrecognizable, shrivelled and veiny, a heavy flannel shirt that I don’t own creeping its way down my arms. I looked back up at the mirror and saw a thick, black fog deep in the distance, moving closer, closer, closer. I took a step toward it, now just a foot from the glass, wanting to reach out and touch, wanting to walk through and sink into the fog, understand it, except I couldn’t, I knew it would swallow me whole. I didn’t even know what the fog is, but I knew it was coming for me.

As I stepped closer to the mirror, the fog did too and then I saw my own face. My own face but not mine at all—my cheeks were sunken, my eyes all whites, my hair short, my jaw sharp—I was me in the dream, but not me, not Rose, someone else, some other me. The other me brought his hands up in front of him, palms facing me, and then pushed, reaching through the glass of the mirror and outward, stretching his long fingers toward the fog.

Just as my fingers touched the smooth surface of the mirror, the glass shattered into a million pieces, a loud blaring noise rattling my teeth, the fractured mirror bits pushing out toward me, slicing my face, the fog rushing forward, overwhelming me and then—

I woke up.

AUGUST 31ST, 2016

Every morning, I wake up more and more exhausted. It feels like the fog from my dream followed me out and is weighing me down, clouding everything around me. I feel completely off-kilter, my frustration over sleeping so much and not feeling rested the only emotion I can access.

I passed my dad in the hallway this morning, thinking that I needed to talk to him. But I don’t know what about. That fog was still gathered around me like a heavy coat, my frustration mounting when I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to talk to him. I still haven’t told my family anything about the dreams or the falling asleep or what really happened at urgent care. Which brings me to …

Yesterday, when I was writing in the kitchen and Aaron was lurking around, he eventually started looking over my shoulder, nosing his way into my business like usual.

“Writing about how cool and accomplished I am and how you’ve always felt inferior to your older brother?” he said, crunching on a carrot loudly next to my ear.