(no subject)

[thewingedword]

This dream started with me at a friends house; she lives, or used to live, in a cabin by a lake. I was a very small girl sitting on the top bunk of a bunk bed and listening to her chatter below me. Quite suddenly, as often happens in dreams, she was gone. I wasn't really sure if she'd ever been there to begin with; I was having trouble remembering.

I got up and left the house, walking down to the lake; somehow, I became the age I am now on the way. The path is a narrow, crooked and dangerous staircase of cinderblocks set into a hillside, but I nearly ran down it, feeling no fear. I walked into the lake in my clothes and started paddling out to the center, then down. Once underwater, I wasn't breathing, I didn't have to. There was no air in my lungs. Looking back on it now, I think they were full of water.

So I was stroking down and down, deeper than the lake really goes, until everything was black and the water was freezing cold. I realized, suddenly, that I didn't know what way was up anymore. I've had this dream twice in the past month, and this is where it changed.

The first time, I panicked. I started lunging desperately in all directions, swimming as hard as I could, knowing that I could be going sideways or even further down. I started trying to scream underwater but I couldn't hear anything, started panicking and thrashing- and woke up screaming.

The second dream was in its way worse. After realizing that I was lost, I started swimming, but quickly just... stopped. I was trying to feel fear or panic, but I couldn't even feel how cold the water was. It was like the coldness of the water was inside of me; I just went numb. Eventually, I stopped trying and just drifted, no longer worrying about which way was up. After a little bit, I started to wonder if there even was an up, or if I hadn't been drifting there forever, no sign of changing. I felt like absolutely nothing. I woke up and felt like absolutely nothing.

I'm desperately afraid that that's how I'll end my life. Alone, forgetting that I'd ever been anything else, and- like Thanatopsis assures me- with only the cold comfort that everyone I ever loved or respected or hated, knew or wanted to know or had no chance of ever impressing, would eventually join me.


But enough about me. I'm really quite a boring person, at heart; I just try to deceive myself as to the truth of that.