A Dream of Reality

It was just another day. I woke up, went to work, met friends, and followed the usual routine of my life.

Then I was suddenly approached by an older woman. She called me by name and introduced herself. She said she had a proposition for me.

You see, her daughter had found some old papers in an abandoned desk at school. After reading them, her daughter brought them to her to share the amazing find she had made. The woman told me that these papers held a story.

She told me they both loved the story, and she said had immediately searched for the rest of it. Apparently, it could not be found published anywhere, and there were no other papers to be found. There was only a name written in small letters at the top of every page.

It was my name. It was my story, ten chapters that I had written years ago in the fifth grade.

The woman said that the papers also included my notes for the rest of the story, and she told me that she had completed it. She wanted me to sign some documents so she could have it published.

We went to the school where I had lived my younger life. I found myself at the old, abandoned desk where I had left the papers all those years ago. That is where I signed the new papers, the agreement that gave my story to the woman.

After that, I began to read what she planned to publish. I held the wrinkled pages of my past in one hand, comparing them to the screen before me. The first ten chapters were almost identical between the copies. There was editing, but little revision. It was still very much the story I had written long ago.

When I reached the tenth chapter, the memories of writing this story came rushing in all at once. I had never had great plans for it. I simply wrote it in my spare time, when I was done with the day's work for a class. It had not seemed like much at the time. It had only been a way of occupying myself.

One day, I must have placed it inside this desk and forgotten to retrieve it. I had looked for it through my belongings, but I had never found it. I eventually gave up on it. At the time, I had not expected anything from it anyway. I had not been worried over the loss of it.

After finishing the tenth chapter, I paused to reflect. Yes, there were errors and flaws, but a small bit of revising and editing had fixed those easily. If I had only continued the story, if I had not lost it, if I had finished it myself, then I know that it would have been successful. It was an amazing story. The potential was all there.

But it was no longer my story. I found myself dizzy in the sudden rush of emotion. In one moment, I would be elated that someone had picked up the story where I left off, that the story had not been left forgotten by the wayside of time. In the next, I would be consumed by disgust, and I was disgusted with myself. How could I have signed away my rights to the story, to my story?

I began to read the rest. It was written just the way I would have written it; everything was in accordance with my notes. It even ended with the exact scene, the exact words, that I had wanted to end it with. It may have been written out by another, but there was no doubt that the story was still my own.

Except that it wasn't.

I reached the Acknowledgements and saw my name where the woman explained how she had come across the story, how the first ten chapters were written by me, and how the rest of the story was inspired by what I had left behind. I remember thinking that my name should not be in the Acknowledgements—I should have been the one writing them. I should have written it all. I should not have signed away my rights to the story, to my story, to what was once my story.

I finished reading the story, and I looked down at the papers in my hand. I followed the creases of where the papers had been bent and crinkled, my eyes tracing them over my small, childish print. At the time, that is what this all had seemed: childish. My eyes drifted to the name written out at the top of every page. My name.

I raised my finger and began to smudge them all out. They did not belong there. The story was no longer mine to claim. One after another, the name scrawled in my young, unpracticed hand was blurred out, gradually vanishing from each page. Small drops of rain fell down onto the pages, except that I was still inside at that old, abandoned desk, and it was not raining today. There was not a cloud in the sky. But then why did everything seem so much darker? The rain came harder, searing hot paths across my face before falling onto the papers.

Slowly, I placed a hand over my eyes and wiped away the signs of the storm. Some time later, I began to breathe steadily. I dabbed out the wet spots on the papers still held in my hand, placing them inside of the woman's computer before lowering the screen and locking it in place with a soft snap.

I stood and walked out of the room, following the halls that seemed so much smaller than they once were. I knew that wasn't the truth. The halls were exactly the same. I was the once that had changed. I was older. Already so much older.

I found the woman where she said she would be waiting for me. She wanted to know what I thought of it. I told her that it was everything I could have wanted it to be. She asked me if I wanted to keep the papers. She said it only seemed right for me to have them. 

I shook my head. I wanted her to give them to her daughter. In a way, her daughter had been my one true reader, the only one to have read what was only mine and loved it for what it was, someone that had seen immediately what I had only seen too late. I hoped someday the young girl would give writing a try herself. I hoped that she wouldn't give up on it, that she would never give up on one of her stories.

As I walked away, more than the happiness I felt for my story being found and finished, more than the disgust I felt for giving it away, I found myself crippled by the crushing chains of regret.

)()()()()()()()()()()()()()(

When I woke up, I could feel my entire body absolutely shivering with that feeling of regret. My remorse followed me from my dream, and it left me feeling cold and empty. It was a grim way of waking up. 

After some hot cocoa, I felt myself again, and I began to wonder what the dream could have meant. I began to write down what I could remember. Even as specifics fled my mind, one thing remained: the memory of the guilt. 

That is what made me decide to write the dream in its entirety down and share it here. It may seem like a silly dream, or a strange one, but I thought the message behind it was important.

Do not give up on your writing, even if it seems horrible or inconsequential at the time. Do not allow room for regret. Writing can be hard, and the insecurity that comes with it can seem overwhelming, but there is a story inside of each of us waiting to be told. (I almost titled this piece Untold Stories.) We only need to let it out. 

I encourage you all to look through your old drafts, through old stories that you have put aside or cast away. Do not let them be forgotten and lost forever to time. If you have never written, I encourage you to place some words down. 

You never know where your story will take you.