The Nightmare

Last night I had a dream that woke me up at around 3:30 am with my heart pounding and gripped by fear. It feels strange writing this down but it wasn’t’ a typical nightmare of zombies, or killers, it felt much more profound and prophetic and that’s why I wanted to capture it.  I’d love to know if I’m missing anything in my own interpretation of it.

I’m sitting on the window seat of the train. My boyfriend is on the seat in front of me and next to me is a young girl of about 12, her skin is olive and I think one parent is English, and one parent from the Caribbean. Her tight curls are scraped back onto her head.

“What’s it like…being on your own?” She asks and I’m watching her doodle pentagrams, and drawing triangles within the triangles on each arm of the star, something I used to doodle when I was little.

I know she doesn’t mean being totally alone, and I tell my boyfriend this briefly to let him know I know he’s there. She means what’s it like having no path carved, and having no-one to tell me which way to turn.

“It’s hard” I reply. “It’s lonely, and things take time. There aren’t any answers, you have to wait, and try and figure out everything on your own.” She nods as though she understands but doesn’t lift her head from her doodles. “But it was the best talking advice I ever had” I continue. She looks at me confused. “I mean, by having no advice, it’s the best gift I could have ever had from someone.”

I finish speaking and look out of the window feeling a little sad and not knowing if this is actually true. The girl stops drawing and puts her hand on my arm, I turn towards her and see her smiling a little.

“You’re my favourite person. You mean so much to me.” She says and though I give her a smile back I feel as though I’m about to burst into tears.

Whilst we’ve been talking, someone has been talking on the public address system on the train, it’s a girl’s voice of about 15, or 16. I was aware that the voice was different to that of the conductor’s, but it was only when myself and the young girl next to me stop chatting that we can both hear her words. She sounds upset.

“I’m tired, and I’m sorry. To all the clipboards out there, I want to say that I am tired of meaning nothing to you, of not measuring up, and of not being good enough. I’m tired of feeling like I don’t matter and I just don’t want to do it anymore. I’m sorry.”

There is a clunk and a click of the microphone being dropped, and though we don’t know where the girl is on the train, we know that she has thrown herself off and under it. There is widespread gasping in the carriage as it slows and I’m almost out of my seat shouting “No!” I’m grasping at the chairs around me in a fruitless attempt to reach the girl to tell her not to give up, to never give up but I know that it’s useless because that girl is gone.

And that’s when I woke. Heart pounding, frightened and tearful and feeling very disturbed by it all.

I will be writing a proper blog later today about copywriting but I wanted to get this down.

I’ve been chewing it over and in simple terms I think the young girl who admires me is a part of me that needs to be nurtured, and the girl on the microphone is the voice inside waiting for approval from others (the “clipboards” are people who are mark and judge others). But I’m no expert in dreams so I would love to hear from anyone who can help me understand this…if there is anything there to even understand.

Bizarre!