JANUARY 10TH, 2017

I don’t remember writing that. I know I must have. It’s my handwriting, looking like I’m guessing it would if I were a few sheets to the wind. I can barely read the words, but it was clearly about a dream I was having. A dream that feels like it’s still right behind my eyelids and like it’s already very, very far away. I don’t remember the details, barely remember a single image, but I can still smell flowers. A woman’s perfume. My skin feels sensitive, like I’ve touched charged metal and gotten a shock.

So it turned out that I was right to be afraid. First time dreamdiving in a week and I’m instantly dropped into a nightmare. I just didn’t expect it to be someone else’s nightmare. I don’t remember seeing anyone, can’t recall anything about the point of view, but I know I wasn’t me. I couldn’t control anything, couldn’t get myself out or change the dream from the inside. And none of those feelings were even remotely mine. Fear so real and visceral it tastes like rusted metal on your tongue, guilt so all-consuming I didn’t even have to breathe it in for it to crawl down my throat and choke me.

And then … peace. A burst of blue neon electricity that transformed into warm yellow sunlight, the smell and texture of flowers and skin … calm and rightness. Like I was right where I was supposed to be. I’ve never been in a dream quite so abstract before, quite so abrasive, with so many conflicting feelings that lie on top of one another, none of them getting enough room to breathe.

Whoever’s head I was in last night has some serious stuff they need to work out.

Warm sunlight.

Flowers.

The perfume of her hair.

The flowers on her arm, pink and blooming.

Her eyes, smiling and warm.

I’m so safe here. In the cornfields.

His smile. His laugh.

So warm. So safe. The cornstalks grow higher, they bend and bow, growing spikes from their ears, razor blades amidst the corn.

His laugh is as strong as a razor.

Her disappointment.

His teeth.

January 12th, 2017

Dear Mark,

The dreamless sleeping has stopped. The last bit of hospitality that the AM showed me has been taken away. I guess I’m healing up pretty well—I’ve even started taking supervised “walks,” by which I mean thirty minutes where I get to circle my hospital room, handcuffed to an IV while a bunch of AM lackeys watch me through the window. It’s nice to not feel like I’ve been put together with floss and Scotch tape anymore, but the drugs were … not bad.