in the wake

She woke once again from a deep sleep and lay with her eyes closed for a few seconds, savouring that warm feeling. Then she became aware she was awake and felt a second's utter confusion, for it didn't seem like she had been sleeping. As the seconds passed, reality seeped in and her eyes fluttered open. At the same moment, she realized it had happened again--she had had one of what she called "those dreams". She lay for a moment staring vacantly at the cupboard, trying as ever to recall a single detail from the dream. As always, her mind was blank; and as always, she began to wonder if she'd even had a dream. Perhaps she'd just woken from a very deep sleep. Yet the memory of that deep sense of contentment in the moments after waking remained with her, along with a feeling of loss, as if she had forgotten something very dear, and forgotten that she's forgotten.

These were happy days in her life and this sense of loss was odd and slightly upsetting to her. It was a strange way to wake to days that she looked forward to starting, busy days, full in themselves of happiness and beauty. Why then, the sense of loss? On days like today, she wished she remembered, just so she could get on with her day. In the past, when life was very far from ideal, those dreams were both dream and curse. She would wake from them and feel that heavenly sense of contentment, and she was sure she woke smiling--probably the only time in those days when she smiled. And then consciousness would seep in and she would feel as though she had fallen with a thump. Getting through the day would seem like such an unpleasant task, she would just want to roll over and return to that dream--if she had dreamt at all. But even then she would push herself out of bed because the sense she had about that dream was that it had been a glimpse into someone else's life, someone so different from herself as to be from a different country, a different culture.

Some mornings, she fancifully toyed with the idea that perhaps she actually lived another life, one that began in a different world when she slept. Though she had never recalled a single detail of those dreams, she always had a feeling that she was waking from a full life, a pleasant life but a life completely different from the one she woke to.

Now she spread her hand over the empty space next to her on the double bed, stretched and got out of bed. And as ever, the dream and all the strangeness it brought her many mornings was forgotten, never to be thought of . . . till the next time.