On My Happy Cloud

Dream

I had a dream last night. It was fluid and the colors were bright and patchy, like watercolor dripping from a brush onto parchment and bleeding together. I was at Pinki's wedding and everyone I knew was there. My family, my friends. Ryan, Sharon, Blake. My co-workers, Cindy. And I kept dissapointing them. All my failures were together, all in a line and being pressed upon everyone. One right after the other, I just kept letting everyone down. It felt like I was on stage and they were all there to see me. But what I was preforming wasn't graceful, or beautiful. It was a joke. Like I was a comedian in a slapstick and everyone knew there were there to laugh at me, waiting for me to do something stupid. I could see in my mind, everyone in the audience laughing so hard that they were clutching their stomachs, tears in their eyes.

At the wedding everyone was mad at me. I had done something different to each person to make them ignore me and not talk to me. I didn't want to be there anymore, I had to get away. So, I started running. At first I was just running in the building. Up staircases and down stair cases, trying to get out of the building but I just kept running into dead ends and dark halls that I didn't care to venture into.

I rested for a moment but people found me, one by one. They told me what I had done. How I had messed up. So, I started running again. I finally made it outside. I wasn't going to stop running. I ran through a pumpkin patch and into a forrest, up a gravel road. People driving by almost hit me but I didn't care. I couldn't stop. I waited for my body to start aching, for my lungs to start feeling like they were deprived of air, to feel a stitch in my side but it never came. I ran restlessly and comfortably like it was a second nature. Like my body was made to do it. I waited to feel exhausted and until I did I was going to just keep running. But soon I was running out of places to run. I ran through town and back again. Back through the forrest and the pumpkin patch and the building where the wedding was and then back again. I just knew I had to keep running. It felt good, amazing, wonderful. Leaving everything behind me and it never hurting.

And then I woke up.

Elaine Bradley