Before It Happened
It was a Tuesday in March. I remember because I'd spent most of the day doing something tedious at work organizing files, responding to emails that didn't really need responses, that kind of thing. Nothing memorable. By the time I got home I was tired in that flat, uninspired way where you're not physically exhausted but your mind feels dull.
I made dinner. I don't remember what. I watched part of a show I'd seen before, something familiar that didn't require much attention. Around ten I brushed my teeth and got into bed. The room was dark except for a sliver of streetlight coming through the curtain. I could hear a car pass every few minutes, that low hum that fades into silence.
I wasn't thinking about dreaming. I wasn't thinking about much of anything, really. I just wanted to sleep.
I don't know how long it took. Maybe twenty minutes. I felt myself sinking, that heaviness that comes right before you go under, and then I was gone.
The Moment I Noticed
I was standing in a parking lot. It was empty, or mostly emptythere were a few cars scattered across the asphalt, but no people. The sky was that pale gray-blue color you get right before sunset, or maybe just after sunrise. I couldn't tell which.
I was walking toward a building I didn't recognize. Low and brick, with wide glass doors that reflected the sky. I had the sense that I needed to go inside, though I couldn't remember why. It felt important in a vague, dream-logic kind of way.
I reached for the door handle and pulled. It was heavier than I expected, or maybe I was weaker than I should have been. The door opened slowly, and I stepped into a hallway that was too bright. Fluorescent lights overhead, white tile floors, the kind of lighting that makes everything look slightly washed out.
And then I saw my reflection in the glass of a framed poster on the wall.
I stopped. I don't know why I stopped, because I'd walked past reflections before without pausing. But something about it made me look closer. My face looked like my face, but the details were wrong. Not dramatically wrong, just... soft. Blurred at the edges. Like a photograph taken with the wrong settings.
I stared at it for a few seconds, and that's when the thought came.
I'm dreaming.
Not as a question. Not as a guess. Just a fact. The same way you might think, it's raining, when you hear rain against the window. Certain and immediate.
And the moment I thought it, everything shifted. Not the scenery I was still standing in that hallway, still looking at the reflection. But my awareness changed. It was like I'd been watching a movie and suddenly realized I was in it. Present. Conscious. Awake inside the dream.
What It Felt Like
The first thing I noticed was the silence. Not that the dream was quiet, but that my mind was. All the background noise I usually carry worries, half-formed thoughts, the mental static that runs underneath everything it was gone. Or at least very, very faint.
I was just there. Standing in the hallway. Completely aware that I was dreaming and somehow still in the dream at the same time.
I turned away from the reflection and looked down the hallway. It stretched farther than it should have, doors on either side, all of them closed. The fluorescent lights flickered slightly, and I could hear the hum of them, that low electrical buzz that you don't usually notice unless you're paying attention.
I started walking again, but slower this time. I wanted to see if I could control things. Not in a big way, not like making the hallway disappear or turning it into a forest or anything like that. I just wanted to see if I could choose where to go.
I stopped in front of one of the doors and reached for the handle. My hand looked normal, solid, real. I could see the lines in my palm, the shape of my knuckles. I turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Inside was a room I'd never seen before. Small, with a single window on the far wall. The light coming through was soft and golden, late-afternoon light. There was a chair in the corner, a wooden one with a slanted back, and a table with nothing on it.
I walked inside and stood by the window. I could see outside, though I don't know what I was looking at. Trees, maybe. Or a field. It didn't matter. What mattered was the feeling of being there. Of standing in that invented room and knowing it wasn't real but experiencing it anyway.
I put my hand on the windowsill. It was cool and smooth, and I could feel the texture of the wood under my fingers. Not the same as touching something when I'm awake, but not nothing, either. It had weight. Substance. Presence.
I stayed there for a while, just looking out the window. I didn't try to do anything dramatic. I didn't try to fly or change the room or call someone into existence. I just wanted to be there, fully, for as long as I could.
At some point I thought about my body, the one lying in bed in the dark. I could almost feel it, like a faint echo of weight and warmth somewhere far away. But I was here too. In the dream. Aware of both at once, though one felt much closer than the other.
I turned away from the window and walked back into the hallway. The lights were still humming. The doors were still closed. I kept walking, not toward anything in particular, just moving through the space because I could.
I don't know how much time passed. Time didn't feel the same. It wasn't slow or fast, it was just... different. Untethered. Like I could have been there for five minutes or an hour and it would have felt the same either way.
Eventually I felt the awareness start to slip. Not all at once, but gradually, like a hand loosening its grip. The clarity began to fade, and the dream started to feel more like a regular dream again. Less vivid. Less present.
I didn't fight it. I just let it go.
The hallway dissolved, and I was somewhere else, and I didn't know I was dreaming anymore. The thread was gone.
After Waking Up
I woke up before my alarm went off. The room was still dark, but I could see the first hints of light at the edge of the curtain. I lay there for a long time, not moving, just trying to hold onto the feeling.
It was still there. Not the dream itself, exactly, but the quality of it. That stillness. That sense of being completely present in a moment, even if the moment wasn't real in the usual sense.
I could remember it clearly. Not in fragments the way I usually remember dreams, but as a whole, continuous experience. The parking lot, the hallway, the room with the window. The moment I realized. The feeling of standing there, awake inside sleep.
I got up eventually and went to the kitchen. I made coffee and stood by the counter while it brewed, watching the light change outside the window. Everything felt quieter than usual. Slower. Like I was still carrying something from the dream with me, some quality of attention that hadn't fully left.
I kept noticing small things. The way the light moved across the floor. The sound of water running when I rinsed the cup. The weight of my feet on the tile. Things I walk past every day without really seeing.
It stayed with me through the morning. Not the dream, but the feeling. That calm, clear awareness. I found myself moving slower, pausing longer, paying attention to things I usually ignore.
By afternoon it had mostly faded, but not completely. There was still a faint trace of it, like an aftertaste. A reminder that awareness can shift, that presence is something you can notice even when you're not trying.
A Quiet Thought
I've had a few lucid dreams since then. Some clearer than others. None quite as vivid as that first one, but close enough that I recognize the feeling when it happens.
I don't try to make them happen anymore. I used to, for a while. I'd set intentions before bed, repeat phrases to myself, try to train my mind to recognize the signs. But it started to feel forced, and the dreams stopped coming.
Now I just sleep. And sometimes I wake up inside a dream, and sometimes I don't.
What I think about now, when I remember that night, isn't the dream itself. It's the awareness. The feeling of being awake in a place that didn't exist, of knowing I was there even though I wasn't.
It makes me wonder how often I'm awake in waking life. Really awake. Not just moving through the day on autopilot, but present, aware, noticing.
I don't have an answer to that. I just think about it sometimes. Usually in the morning, when the light is soft and the world feels quiet, and I remember what it felt like to stand in that hallway and know, without question, that I was dreaming.
0 Comments