Don’t tell them.

I always imagine that the unconscious mind is like an ocean. Coral reefs and the works. There are many known, many unknown species living in there. I always imagine thoughts to be fishes. Some that live close to the ocean bed, some come up to catch the sunlight in their swan dives. There are fishes who like the silence near the ocean bed because let’s just face it – it is least populated. These fishes like the sunken ships and the seaweed that lets them hide till it is time to get out. They can decide the time they wish to take a peek.

All my unconscious thoughts are these little fishes. They like to stay away from the consciousness of real, practical and boring details of life. Too banal, right?
My repressed thoughts are pleasing. They often surface during the day or sometimes on a rainy night, when I’m so quiet that I can hear the pulse along my neck throb. Mostly, it is when I dream that these fishes come to taste the shallow waters. They feel safe suddenly. That’s when the happy unwinding dreams transform me into a human log. I am just there. I’ve let my mind wander off so far that it feels comfortable never coming back. Mornings thus are always difficult. Inadvertently late, I always am!

Dreams are where I’ve fallen in love with so many selves. I could be anybody there. I don’t want to be someone famous; just many different versions of my own self. When you have a personality that never took form, you feel like jello. I am jello, for all intents and purposes of this discussion. My mould mostly demands social conformity but my heart betrays the cause of society. My shrewd tongue makes me talk to much. But dreams!
What a miraculous place of being and becoming. Imagine a grassland where every square inch of grass was made of a wish you’ve hidden, where every animal is a version of your personality you wanted to materialise, where the sun rose to actually make you feel bright and suddenly the emotional intensity you naturally feel is acceptable. Dreams are so consuming! I dream of falling of cliffs, buildings, being run over by buses. I also dream of hotels without doors, old abandon caves, dead bodies and plane crashes. It is not knowing what I’ll dream tonight that makes me want to close my eyes quicker.

Mostly I dream because the moment between falling asleep and deep sleep is this black blur. Silence suddenly takes over and you race through a few hours, almost hallucinating unimaginable ideas that are so beautiful and fleeting. In my dreams I can turn around and leave people without any guilt; I could be jobless and I don’t owe anything to anyone. In my dreams I could be a unicorn? Fuck that. In my dreams my body, mind and soul aren’t bound by social ties, customs, bonds and more. In my dreams I’m retelling tales battered to hide in a corner, I’m recreating imagery that partially washes up against my shore once in a while. Why do I keep going back to the ocean? There is no better place to be than the ocean bed. I can scream my heart out and not be heard. It is my peaceful place.
Dreams are fascinating because when I’m asleep for those few hours I do not belong to anyone – I am no one’s daughter, no one’s sister, no one’s girlfriend. I may not even be me. Tonight I could be the lady who has a big typewriter. I’ll never know, till I am her.

There is one more thing about dreams. When you get so hurt that you can’t take it, you can wake up. When you get hurt that the pain is too much, you can wake up. I love dreams because you’ll never know what I dream about and I’ll never be able to recreate them in words.

– Just Panda Thoughts