Behind These Hazel Eyes

There are nights when sleep becomes a doorway instead of an escape.

If I wake and keep still... If I don't open my eyes for too long... If I don't let the waking world get its hooks into me... I can sometimes find my way back.

Back into the same dream... Into the same life.

It waits for me as though I never left.

The conversations continue. The people I love are still smiling. The wounds I carry are nowhere to be found. There are no bills, no diagnoses, no grief hiding in the corners... No ghosts. No regrets. No endless rehearsals of things I should have said or done.

Just peace.

A simple, impossible peace.

Every time it happens, returning becomes a little harder...

Not returning to the dream... Returning from it.

Because the dream knows exactly what I am missing.

It builds a world from every longing I've ever buried, every prayer that went unanswered, every version of my life that died somewhere along the way. It gives them back to me without hesitation, without conditions.

Then morning arrives and takes them all away again.

The cruelest part is that I remember enough.

Not every detail... Dreams are mercifully vague that way.

But I remember how it felt.

I remember belonging there.

I remember being happy...

Sometimes I lie awake afterward, staring into the darkness, grieving people who never existed and memories that never happened. Mourning a life that was never mine.

I wonder if that is why dreams fade so quickly.

Perhaps they disappear not because they are fragile, but because if we remembered them too clearly, some of us would never want to leave.

Some mornings I understand why ancient sailors followed phantom lights into the fog.

Why wanderers chased mirages across deserts.

Why people spend their lives searching for paradise.

I've been there...

Every night, for a little while.

A perfect world hidden behind my eyelids...

A life that loved me back.

Sometimes, when the alarm hasn't sounded yet, and the sky is still dark beyond my window, I find myself bargaining with consciousness itself.

Just a few more minutes... Just let me go back.

Because for a handful of fleeting hours, I become someone whose heart is whole.

Waking up feels less like beginning a new day... and more like losing everything all over again.

And then comes the guilt.

Because I know what waits for me when I open my eyes...

I know there are people here who love me.

People I would cross oceans for.

People whose laughter can still reach places inside me that grief has not managed to touch.

My son, with his endless capacity to make ordinary moments feel extraordinary and beautiful.

My partner, whose presence has become a harbor in storms I once believed would entirely consume me.

These are not small things.

They are everything.

Which is why the guilt settles so heavily in my chest whenever I feel myself longing for sleep more than morning.

Because it feels like betrayal.

How could I miss a world that does not exist when I have people here who do? How could I mourn dreams while standing in a life that still contains love? The answer is one I rarely admit out loud.

The dreams are not better because they contain more love...

They are better because they contain less pain.

There is a difference.

In dreams, no responsibilities are pressing against my ribs. No memories waiting around to be noticed. No exhaustion woven into my bones. No invisible wounds that follow me into every room.

The people I love in this world are precious to me...

But love and pain have become tangled together here.

Every beautiful thing comes with fear of losing it.

Every joyful moment arrives carrying the knowledge that it cannot last forever.

Every embrace exists within a world where hearts break, bodies fail, and time steals from us all.

The dreams ask nothing of me...

They don't remind me of what I have survived.

They don't demand strength.

They simply open their arms and say, "Rest."

For someone who has spent so much of life carrying things too heavy for one person to hold, that invitation feels dangerously close to salvation.

I do not want to leave this life.

I do not wish away the people I love.

If anything, they are the reason I continue to rise each morning despite the ache of returning.

Sometimes even the strongest hearts grow tired.

Sometimes even the most grateful souls long for a place where they can finally set their burdens aside.

Perhaps that's all a dream really is.

Not a better life... Not a replacement for this one...

Just a sanctuary.

A quiet room hidden somewhere in the wilderness of my mind, where for a few hours, I am allowed to stop carrying the weight of being human.

Maybe that's why I keep returning.

Not because I love this life any less...

But because, for a little while, the dreams let me rest enough to love it again.