Last night I dreamed. It wasn’t the coolest dream or the scariest nightmare. It was both the saddest and most beautiful night tale I have ever experienced. I close my eyes, and open them again to some kind of refugee camp. It was a black night, cloudless yet the stars were not visible. It seemed strange that during such a dark hour everyone was as lively as they could have been during midday. I was looking for something or someone, but don’t remember who or what. It was more of a task. Someone had commanded me to go look for someone I didn’t even know existed or search for something without telling me what it was. I guess that’s what dreams are like; you only know half the time what you’re doing, and half of that you don’t even know why. Everyone kept talking about some war going on outside; some events that forced us to stay inside.
I woke up. It was 4:42 am and went to answer a call of nature. I returned with my head pounding from a few hours ago, having spent my entire day in front of my laptop. My foot caught a large pack of water bottles and I decided to drink one, maybe this way my head would stop killing me. I drank deep, and lied down to sleep again. It took me about six minutes or so, and suddenly I was back at the camp.
It was daytime, and the camp actually looked pleasant with he sun shining above. It seemed to remind me of a nice hotel I once went to. I walk to where the voices are guiding me and find myself in a beach bar, crowded with residents or refugees, whatever they were. People were drinking pink, frozen cocktails, just like the ones you would order at the beach. I went there and found my dad playing with a TV, and realized he was installing some kind of weird apparatus that allowed you to search someone or something and watch memories of them.
I approached my dad and told him I wanted to use it and I immediately typed in my mother’s name. After a few minutes I feel someone standing right behind me. I turn around to find my mother, in flesh and bone, right in front of me. She was shorter than I remembered–maybe because I had been 6 the last time I saw her. She also looked young, the same way she looked when she left us. A slim, brown-skinned woman, with dark hair up to her shoulders. Her smile was huge and perfect, a smile that could only make you mirror it when ever you saw it; and her teeth were as white as pure snow.
It was unbelievable. I stood there, mouth gaping open just staring at my long gone protector. The person that gave me life, and died when I was six, was standing right in front of me. She stared back, and then hugged me. She looked at my eyes with the happiest and most beautiful smile I had ever seen, grabbed my hand and led me towards the bar, and that’s when it all began. We danced, sat and chatted for long hours of the years we missed, of friends and family, school, life, and God knows what else. And then we danced again, to the beat of the bar. She made me forget why we were there. This ‘war’ keeping us inside vanished, and this dream became the reality I had always yearned for.
That’s when I realized that this wasn’t forever. I halted and she looked at me with a questioning smile. What’s wrong, she seemed like asking. I hugged her; a tight, warm hug, and the tears started to flow. I couldn’t control them, even in my own dream. It was the first time I have ever cried this way in a dream, and it felt so real. She felt so real, and this bittersweet feeling crept up inside. I kept crying while she comforted me, crying and telling her that I loved her and I miss her. Telling her that she could not go back, that she had to stay with us and live with us. She was the most beautiful person; the happiest being I have ever laid my eyes upon and she was leaving me. She was leaving me, just like she did when I was six. So I hugged her tighter, not wanting to let go, tears kept flowing, unstoppable…
…and then I woke up.