Dream Theory

I thought I’d feel better by now.

I sit here trying to use music as a time machine. I am listening to the steady buzz of "Lovely" by Billie Eilish, trying to summon the ghost of the woman who inhabited my skin when I first heard these notes. How do I recapture her? That lively, unafraid version of myself?

Why does the woman sitting here now feel so broken, so paralyzed?

It pains me to look back at that season. The memories come back with texture. The song, the room, the version of me who still believed she could become anything. I can almost reach her. But I am frozen. A deer in the headlights of my own future.

Some days feel like swimming in wet clothes. It is a strange war to wage...desiring limitless possibility while being able to manage only one small thing a day. I try to tell myself: You should be proud. One thing is better than nothing. But my mind is restless; it screams at me to change, to run, to move.

My body is heavy; it whispers, No. Not yet.

When will I feel in control again?

There is a subtle thought cutting through the noise, something someone once told me: "What we dream about, we bring about."

I used to brush it off. But what if it is true? What if I have been treating belief like a mood instead of a practice? What if the variable I have been missing isn't about doing more, but about cultivating the discipline and self-respect to actually believe I can? We are so often poisoned by distraction, looking for complex answers. But maybe the secret has been right under my nose, and I have just been too stubborn..or too scared, to fully commit.

It is a terrifying thought.

I think I am finally ready to test the theory.