Waking Up

Have you ever been woken from an incredibly vivid dream that you were you were so deeply into that it seems like your entire psyche and each individual sense had to travel great and varying lengths to return to this world? It’s like you know youre waking up, but only insofar as you know your eyes are closed. All of the sensory elements are still present in a kind of ghostly way. Then the images fade. Suddenly you are enveloped by the darkness of your closed eyelids. Then you start to get a sense that you are attached to a body. Maybe you can feel it stretch a little. There are still some auditory elements of the dream world present—and definitely whatever emotional and identity associations you had in the dream—but suddenly you are aware that the stretching body you just detected is attached to the eyelids you initially became aware of, and then you notice that these things belong to you. You become aware of your breathing and open your eyes. The last remnants of whoever you just were dissipate and now you can hear the alarm, which ostensibly woke you up. It’s 6:15 am. You had set the alarm for 6. It took a full 15 minutes for each part of your essential being to reunify into your corporeal state. It feels like each part came back, but sometimes you wonder.