There's a fog bank sitting between me and my dreams. I know they're there – I can sense their movement behind the mist, like shadows of fish beneath ice. But when I reach for them in the morning, they slip away, leaving only the vague impression that something was there at all.
This year has been different. Where once I carried whole worlds back from sleep – continued storylines, recurring characters, landscapes that felt as familiar as my childhood home – now I find myself holding fragments. Five dreams. That's all I can recall with any real clarity out of what must be hundreds. Five islands of memory in an ocean of forgetting.
It's not that I'm not dreaming. I know I am. Sometimes I surface briefly in the night and feel the tail end of a dream dissolving, like sugar in hot tea. By morning, even that sweetness is gone. It's as if someone has placed a translucent screen between my waking mind and my dreaming one, a sort of inner cataract that blurs and obscures what was once so vivid.
The dreams I do remember from this year feel different too. They're like watching a movie through unfocused eyes – the shapes are there, the movement, but the details that make it real are lost. Gone are the tastes of dream-foods, the particular quality of dream-light, the texture of dream-walls under my dream-fingertips. Everything feels one step removed, as if I'm watching my dreams instead of living them.
What puzzles me most is that there's no clear reason for this change. I haven't experienced any particular trauma, haven't started new medications, haven't drastically changed my sleep patterns. My dream world has simply... retreated, like a tide pulling back from the shore. But unlike the tide, it hasn't returned.
I find myself grieving for these lost dreams. They were more than just nightly entertainment – they were a connection to my creativity, a direct line to my imagination. My dream world has always been a place where stories grow wild, where impossible things make perfect sense, where I can explore the furthest reaches of my mind's capabilities. Now it feels like trying to read a beloved book with most of its pages turned to blank paper.
The few dreams I do remember from this year stand out like bright beacons in the fog. But they feel isolated, disconnected from the rich tapestry of continuing dreams I used to experience. It's as if my dream world has gone from being a sprawling, interconnected novel to a collection of brief, unrelated short stories.
Sometimes I wonder if this is temporary – if my dreams are quietly regrouping, preparing for some new phase of creativity. Perhaps this is a fallow period, necessary but uncomfortable, like the quiet of winter before spring's explosion of growth. Or maybe this is my mind's way of processing something I'm not yet conscious of, like how the tide pulls back before a wave.
For now, I continue to set my intentions before sleep, to keep my dream journal by my bed, to reach out into that fog bank hoping to grasp something solid. I'm learning to be patient with this new dream landscape, trying to trust that even if I can't see them clearly, my dreams are still there, still weaving their stories, still doing their mysterious work in the depths of my mind.
Maybe this year of quiet dreams is itself a kind of dream – one that's teaching me something about the cycles of creativity, about the ebb and flow of our inner lives, about the patience required when dealing with the mysteries of our own consciousness. Until the fog lifts, I'll be here, watching and waiting, ready to welcome back the vivid dreams when they choose to return.
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