Death of Dreams

Each dream we have turns into a pearl. Hardened by hope and reaching. Every wish unfulfilled sits in a jar. Things we once wanted. Things we got. Things that changed and then changed us. The jars that line the shelves are overflowing, and they threaten to pull the walls down. Each is a daydream, sitting before us. Brought to life by will and longing.

Yearning leaves us vulnerable. But there is no life within the walls of safety. Only shells carved out of our potential and caskets cobwebbed with regret.

__________

Approval is intoxicating, addicting.

First, I learned to color inside the lines. A family friend taught me, demonstrating how to take a large picture and create smaller boxes within it. Creating a patchwork that I made a game of filling in. Breaking a larger task down into manageable pieces. Life lesson unlocked.

I spun this new skill into winning coloring contests. Never mind that these were at the local grocery store and I’m sure every child who entered “won.” It was all the validation I needed to confirm that following the rules led to rewards.

Around the age of ten, I helped my grandfather paint the trim on the porch screens. They were laid out on sawhorses in the yard, a sea of panels awaiting adornment. I took the work seriously, and despite being a child decked out in faded denim and an oversized t-shirt, I didn’t spill a drop. My grandfather remarked that he had never seen someone paint so carefully.

I beamed. I was doing this right. I was staying inside the lines.

I carried this sense of measured control for as long as I could and applied it anywhere it seemed useful. Grades. Promotions. Relationships. Friendships. They all needed labels and ranking. If I approached each of them by creating smaller boxes that I could check in sequential order, I would be approved of, and approve of myself.

__________

The dreams themselves aren’t dangerous, it’s what we do with them. Clinging causes problems, but we’re so struck by their beauty we forget. Or more accurately, we choose not to remember. Distraction is shiny and seductive.

But there comes a time when we need to send these dreams back into the earth. Set gently into shallow graves. No matter how ill-conceived or impossible each of these pearls might be, they hold years of sacrifice, planning, and trapped emotions. To watch the jar be dumped back into the ocean leaves us feeling empty.

Instead, we let them overcome us. Then watch in horror as they roll out of our mouths like so many marbles. Spit out glossy on the wet earth before us.

Even then, we find ourselves digging our way back to them, picking them up and putting them into our pockets with dirt-stained palms. Desperate to bring the lost weight back to us, not trusting ourselves without the grounding of our regrets.

Letting go of these dreams scares us because we can’t remember where they came from, and they consumed us so wholly for so long. We don’t know how we’ll replace them, and we doubt the depth, width, and breadth of our ability to do so.

But only in letting go of a dream can we make space for a new one. A grander hope that we allow to rise within us. Caution becomes a liability. We must stretch out our arms and breathe. After our chest has been ripped open and all the pearls of our old dreams safely buried, we can begin fresh and new. Raw, but still burning at the edges with a fire that won’t be extinguished.

__________

The boxes I once carefully painted myself into became restrictive, suffocating. In all my life I held back and left space. Never letting all of myself be seen. I learned to save a little of everything, just in case of a dreaded, looming Something. It wasn’t sustainable. It was exhausting.

I still remember the first time I couldn’t be a rock for a friend because my own foundation was crumbling. I still remember the biggest dream I ever gave up on, because it was hurting me in ways that I couldn’t see straight enough to measure.

Eventually I realized that I couldn’t keep it up without sacrificing myself.

With enough failures, I have learned to see the beauty that is created in the chaos. The value in a splash of color in dry landscape. The flowers that sprout in the desert after an unexpected rainfall. That beauty is held in seeds, trapped under the surface, waiting for activation.

I would have expected giving up structures and suffocating expectations to feel freeing. Every step outside the expectations I created for myself feels like a fall down a steep, sharp cliff.

Risks hurt, as they are meant to. But the dream of a perfect life, lived by following all the rules, hurts more.

__________

I let these pearls and this dream of perfection slip out of my fingers and into the sand. Knowing they come from a cycling of wants and yearnings. In time they will be replaced. Some with visions realized and others with heartaches brought to life. That is the beauty and the pain in all of it. Our wanting leaves us open and exposed. But without the wanting, there can be no blooming. And so, we give birth to dreams, knowing some were born to die.