Nightmare

I find that there are two kinds of nightmares: mild and extreme. With mild, you wake up from the nightmare but you're not too affected, not too shaky, and you drift off back to sleep almost immediately.  But with extreme--with extreme you wake up shaking, and once you realize that it was only a dream, you thank God for sparing you that terrible reality and allowing you to wake up in the safety of your bed. That's the kind of nightmare I experienced last night.

In this particular dream, a few of my friends (code names: DYSON, BIZNESS, and GIBBONS) and I had been apparently turned into 1930s gangsters. That part was actually sort of cool. But things took a horrifying turn when we were all captured by a rival gang. The four of us were taken to a warehouse, where we came face-to-face with the gang's ruthless leader. I can remember him distinctly. He was somewhat pudgy with a thick reddish brown beard, a bowler hat, and a brown pinstriped suit. His face isn't reminiscent of anyone I know, which can only mean that my mind created him for the purpose of this dream--a very strange thought in itself. We sat on a crappy, green sofa (a very hospitable way to treat your captives) while dozens of men in suits and fedora hats pointed their Tommy guns in our direction. We were all sweating, frightened for our lives.

"Are you really going to kill us right now?" asked Bizness, wringing his hands together nervously.

"Yes," said the gang leader with a smile. "But not right now."

Not right now. This maniac was going to make us wait for our deaths. Slow, psychological torture. We all started begging for our lives, like little kids who had just had their favorite toys taken away from them. I can remember Dyson asking if we could be given another week, just one more week PLEASE, to live. But the gang leader just grinned and shook his head.

After minutes of fruitless begging, we all fell quiet, eyes on the floor, hands trembling in our laps. At that moment, my friends had no choice but to accept the inevitable: we were all going to die.

But I just couldn't accept that. In my terror, I began to pace the room, wondering what I had done wrong to deserve such a terrible fate and then wondering what that terrible fate actually was. How would I die? Think about that. What an absurd question to ask yourself. It's a question that, despite the absurdity of this dream,  we as humans can actually understand and relate to. For some reason, I was terrified that this gang would bind me to a chair, throw me in a pit, and then bury me under pounds of cement, forcing the stuff down my throat. A gruesome, horrifying way to go.

But my mind was also being tormented by other thoughts. I kept telling myself, I'm 25. 25 years old, and I'm going to die. 25 years old, and I hadn't accomplished a damn thing. It was too young, there were still so many things that I had left to do. Since waking up, I've forgotten a lot of them, but here's some that I do remember: I wanted to get married. I wanted to have kids and be the world's greatest dad. I wanted to know what it was like to have your own family. And because of the circumstances, I would never be able to experience any of that. But the thing that upset me most was that I would never be published, that my talents and ideas were going to waste, that I had started half a dozen books and would never be able to complete them, that I had so many great ideas and stories, and now, I'd never be able to share them with anyone. This was the worst part of it all. Worse than being drowned in a pit of cement, worse than never getting married or having kids.

When I woke up from this nightmare, I couldn't believe that I was in my bed. The dream had felt so real, but my God, was I happy that it wasn't. But at the same time, it was also a reminder of my goals. So I took out my laptop and immediately began to write--because I refuse to let that dream become my reality. Now you're probably asking yourself, why the hell are you sharing this with me? Well, the answer is simple. Even though this was just an absurd dream, I believe that it can apply to our reality. Think about it for a second. If the next few hours were all that you had left to live, how would you perceive your life? Would you be happy and satisfied with it? Did you make the most of your talents, of the opportunities that came to you? Or would you have been like me, regretful and unfulfilled, wishing that you had just a little bit more time?