How to Dream

I have very vivid dreams. I also haven't had a dream that wasn't in some way about cancer for some time. For one brief moment I thought that streak had ended the other night when I woke with a start from a dream, and then the remembering began. I was alone, in the middle of a very dark stage standing next to a grand piano. I was wearing a red baby-doll Christmas dress, the fabric was iridescent and very thin, which looked even more thin under the lone spotlight trained on me. I was clothed, yet naked, standing next to an instrument I had no idea how to play, on a stage. The hall was filled with every person I had ever known, and the rest of the seating was taken by strangers. All I could think while standing there with all these eyes on me was "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing."

Truth is, I don't know what I am doing. I don't know how to play this. I don't know how to make it sound better to myself, to anyone else when they want to know how I feel. I don't know how to feel this terrible and act like I don't. Be so scared one second and talk myself out of it the next. I don't know how to do this, yet I feel as if I should. Not be grouchy, not be so sad, just understand it all.... but I don't.

One major side effect of treating cancer is fatigue, which means I sleep more, which leads to dreaming.