Author’s Note - A Dream of Waking Life

I’ve been a lucid dreamer since I was 13. I’m 33 now. That’s two decades of living other lives and exploring other worlds. That’s tens of thousands of other personalities I’ve met and engaged with. That’s thousands of surreal experiences that are simply unavailable to waking life. I even have persistent dream characters who are more like friends at this point. Some are even lovers. The point is, I spend a great deal of time in my dreams. Stephen LaBerge, one of the pioneers of studying lucid dreaming as an empirical science, once said, “If you must sleep through a third of your life, why should you sleep through your dreams, too?”

Approximately 13 years ago, in my early 20s, I woke to a remarkably vivid world full of carnage and chaos. A random group of people shuffled me into a room and we hid there for a moment, listening to the terrible sounds of death outside. With my history of lucid dreaming, it was at this point that I realized I was dreaming. However, when I did reality checks, they all passed. I did four separate reality checks, and all of them told me I was awake. My heart raced. I am in tears now recollecting that pang of perfectly real dread. I told this group of people, “this is just a dream,” and the look they gave me is still seared into my brain. They looked at me as if I were truly insane. One of the doors to the room burst open, and a large man started spraying me and the rest of the group full of bullets using a giant assault rifle. As I lay there dying, my blood pooling out of me as I hacked on strings of fluid in a futile attempt to breathe, I just kept wondering how this could happen. How could any of this be real?

Of course, it wasn’t. I died in the dream finally and woke up utterly startled. Only, I wasn’t able to move my body. My body was old. It was clear I was on my deathbed. Giant windows in front of me showed that I was in outer space. Again, my mind raced in confusion. Aha! I finally remembered that I was probably still dreaming. Again, I did some reality checks, but they all passed. I felt my heart racing so fast that I was certain I would have a heart attack. And I did. As I lay there dying, I reached out an arm and begged for someone, anyone, to help. But I was all alone on my deathbed. Again, I experienced death.

I woke up utterly startled in this normal reality. Your reality. Our reality. I felt creeped out by those intensely vivid dreams, but I had to go to work, so I tried to brush them off. I went about my morning routine, showering, coffee, eating, brushing my teeth. All of it. I even watched some YouTube videos. Then I hopped in my car and drove to work. It wasn’t until halfway there that I noticed the sky was an odd purple hue. I looked down at my hands and saw that they were longer than usual. I eyed my tattoo on my forearm, which normally says “Awake?”, but it was all hieroglyphic-looking. I realized then that I was still dreaming. I pulled the car over and started crying. Will I ever get out? And even if I get out, will I ever know if I’m really out? I screamed at the top of my lungs, and then I woke up. Really woke up. At least, I think so. For all I know, any moment now things could unravel and all these years could have turned out to be a dream. In 5 minutes I might wake up and be 12 years younger. This is always a very real possibility for me. Especially as a person who suffers from bipolarism and for whom delusions are the norm, it is easy for me to become confused about reality. You wouldn’t know it. I keep the really problematic stuff to myself or just between me and my partner. The alternative is to seem stark raving mad. But I will tell you now. This is all a dream. I don’t mean you’re going to wake up at the end of this life (though maybe you will). I mean this might as well be called a dream, because we don’t know what it is. We don’t know why reality exists, or what it really is, or where it’s all going. We don’t know anything. Nothing. We are like dream characters who confidently believe themselves to be real. But what does real mean? Can you prove the realness of your reality? Of course not.

Though A Dream of Waking Life is listed as fiction, most will be surprised to hear that it is not entirely a work of fiction. And it is not a work of nonfiction either. I went through a great deal of existential confusion and emotional turmoil writing this story. It is very much a story about me as much as it is a story about these characters whose lives I have become intimately involved with.

I hope you enjoy this story. I really do. It is something I’ve wanted to write ever since I had those series of vivid dreams 13 years ago. I hope this story makes you wonder about reality and yourself. I hope it thrills you and leaves you constantly guessing and wanting to know the truth. I hope it sticks with you long after you read it. But most of all, I hope it convinces you what is most important, regardless of whether or not reality is real or just a dream of waking life. I promise you, there is only one thing that matters beyond all else. I can guarantee it. I would stake everything on it. And I do.

There is only one thing that matters. Nothing else. Nothing.