“You know this is a dream, right?”
I’m trying to get a snagged video tape out of the VCR. My sister is sitting on the sofa. Her kids are watching me, it was one of them who called me to get the tape out. The person speaking is her oldest kid. He’s almost my age, just three years younger. This is my home and this is my family.
Except it isn’t real. It is just a dream. But part of me doesn’t care. I go back to fixing the VCR until the dream changes or ends or blends into another. When I wake up I feel out of place. I’ve lost something again. I spend all day replaying that moment where I was confronted with the truth of the “reality” around me and I turned away from it.
Everyone wants to believe that they could, that they would, break free from a Lotus Eater Machine. They would see how fake the world was or realize something was wrong.
Today, I realized given the right dream I would willingly chose the dream over reality. My dreams can feel so real that when I wake I feel like I’ve come back from a long journey. I’ve never been presented with a choice between dream and reality. Last night, I chose a dream over reality. It has shaken me a bit.