I have trouble sleeping at night, and more often than not, it seems these days I don’t remember my dreams. Which wouldn’t be so disconcerting to me if my childhood dreams hadn’t been so real…

Growing up, I’d die a thousand deaths each night as I was plagued with nightmares of cataclysm and a world always struggling to unmake itself. Yet I’d also grow wings and fly, always watching, never actually DYING. I’d feel a searing pain as a bullet entered the back of my head as I scouted for shelter and food, a grown woman I could never imagine myself being, and then a blinding light and, BAM. I was an Archer in a forest in Britain, painted blue and smelling the tang of copper because I preferred the smell of chlorophyll and freedoms to practice my Magick, therefore I’d taste the copper of blood, it would burn my nose, and when I take a spear to the chest and feel my heart emplode. Into my next dream where I could be Anything from Saint Germain trying to save Atlantis, or a witch burned at the the stake. I would always bear witness to destruction. But because I was dreaming I seemed to understand that it wasn’t just destruction, it was the beginning of something different, something new; so it allowed me to swallow my fear and open my eyes wider, and bear witness.

And as I grew I learned a different type of magick, as my brain learned new facts and figures and absorbed new knowledge that had been taught to me as truth. I learned that Woman were meant to keep house, and Men provide, and I learned America, the Land I’d grown up in was one of the Most Profitable Nations, I learned to grow up and go to college, and work for my small little piece of what was ALREADY MINE, while amassing more for others less deserving because they are greedy, and it might never be enough. I got caught up in THAT dream. That in order to get ahead, to build a life I should focus only on myself, and mind my business and stay in my little bubble and I’ll get by all right. Turn a blind eye to the suffering around me, and care less for those that can’t attain all that I have, for surely they don’t work as hard, or they made poor choices, or a million other beliefs, of other people that helped confirm every choice that I maybe didn’t feel so confident in making. And then it hit me…

I stopped dreaming because I stopped sleeping. I realized that so much of what we subscribe to, so much of who we choose to be, steeps from other people’s beliefs. This identity I’ve come to know as me, with my wants and desires and likes, how much of that was I ACTUALLY choosing? So I questioned every single thing I had come to believe about myself.