Cant sleep so we're talking about dreams.
Most people dreams are weird, full of creatures and incomprehensible things, but mine..mine are of shopping malls.
Malls, hospitals, endless isles of buyable goods that are all familiar in a way I can faintly pin down. Fairs, movie stores...sometimes it's just an endless space of shops and such that bleed into one another. You'd expect me to feel claustrophobic or dread...but it's actually the opposite.
Most of the time I feel peace, like I'm safe. Like 'I'm finally home'. Sometimes it's places I alway faintly feel nostalgic of for no real world explanation but in the dreams all I know is that 'I'm safe'. I walk around looking at all the Knick knacks and stuff that you find in flea markets and your grandparents old home from when you were ten and you thought that they were invincible just like your parents.
Sometimes they're homes, but not the kinds of minimalist stuff that's all the rage right now. No, they have wood paneling and huge bulky tv's that little ol you thought 'was luxurious', on carpet that smells of cigs and old perfume your grandmother used to wear before she got welcomed back into the earthen embrace of gods arms.
Full of old furniture made of sturdy wood and old floral patterns you never knew were actually floral till you looked it up just to see something that wasn't gray and white. Of old leather you remember being cradled in on your moms lap when you got sick on your 3rd birthday party.
Everything is so fuzzy and warm, so welcoming.
Some of them hold people as well. Some of them are old fuzzy collections of when I was a child and while looking over everyone knew deep down in my heart that there'd be a day where there'd be no more big family gatherings and that every holiday since would feel so cold, colder than winter ever could be.I remember in a dream one time I looked into a window and saw my grandmother on my moms side, my Mamaw whom I'd only knew as a old woman, young and dancing happily with her husband — a man I'd never knew but always been told loved me from the day I'd been born — I remember waking up from that dream wracked with sobs.
I remember the only thoughts being in my head was that 'she looks so happy' and 'I hope she knew I loved her'
Another is one where I walked right into this house, warmly decorated and welcoming, right to the kitchen to see this woman baking something. Instantly I'm just a child, and as she looks at me from her spot baking I can already feel the tears stream down as she opens her arms for me. And it's like she's always been my mom, and that life before was all a dream I'd woken from.
I remember waking up at 3 am sobbing knowing deep down that I'd probably never be able to do the things I'd always imagined doing with my mother. She'd always been unwell, now confined to a nursing home without functioning hands.
I was sobbing cause I'd probably never be able to drive her down to my favorite coffee house and have a cup of coffee with her.