Time Doesn’t Exist But Somehow I Do

The themes of my dreams are always much the same. I am chased by ogres. I have guns pointed towards me and must jump out a window. I am stuck on a pirate vessel in the middle of the ocean. But mostly, I lose my teeth.

I lose my teeth and hold them in place with Scotch tape. A cafeteria worker from my time in elementary school pulls a molar with a pair of pliers. And sometimes, they all come out in one clump.

I don’t know if dream interpretations can be real when no two brains process information, observations, experiences in the same way. And I don’t know how recurring dreams of teeth can be a common representation of insecurity when no two people feel their emotions in exactly the same way.

The only thing I know is that dreams can be a source of comfort. Your singular, most wonderful dream from when you were seven, can be conjured up in your memories exactly as you witnessed it as a child.

In much the same way, a dream proves that a person exists in all areas of spacetime.

At twenty-two, I am constantly repossessed by a realm I first visited close to ten years ago.

In this place, the air is stagnant, thick, and the color of eerie green. The surrounding landscape is completely flat and barren, the kind of place I imagine belongs in the American Midwest.

In the center of everything is a two-storey, white farmhouse. There are two doors open on the first level. Standing outside, as you look through one door, you can see back outside through the other. Except I am standing inside the house, between the two entrances. They are only entrances.

Besides me, the only living creature in this dream realm is a muscular bull with incredibly long and sharp horns. Despite his stocky animal-build, he makes languid, meditative circles around the farmhouse. And around me.

I am stock-still but unafraid. I know that bull wants nothing more than to spear me through. But I also know, for some reason, and without a doubt, that he can’t get to me. Maybe there is an external force protecting me. Maybe the bull just can’t seem to work up the courage to charge. Or maybe, simply, the door jamb is too narrow to admit him. Either way, the both of us are stuck in a perpetual limbo.

But it is just so, so lovely. And green. I stand there knowing I have nowhere to go and no choices to make. There is no such thing as a future, just the never-ending present. With nothing to do but exist, I have found true peace. And I continue to find it each time I go back.

(This piece originally appeared on Nowhere Girl Collective in November 2024.)