One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front of him. She’s the love of your life, he said, looking up at me, and the force of his gaze, the fire in his eyes, threw me right across the room. I started shouting, Waiter, waiter, then opened my eyes and escaped from that miserable dream. Other nights I didn’t dream of anyone, but I woke up in tears.


Before these past few months I've rarely remembered my dreams. I'd wake occasionally with a few images in my head or a fuzzy story but mostly there was nothing but sleep. I don't think I've had a nightmare since I was a child. Then I changed and they became constant and so real - the dull, pounding fear of finding myself stranded in foreign country with no money and no ticket home or the more piercing terror of the night I spent balanced on a rusty folded chair on top of a swaying and crumbling tower, the nausea and sorrow I felt watching a dog die on the bathroom floor of my fathers house, filling white towels with seeping blood, then the night I woke sobbing after listening to a friend tell me he hated me over and over in the coldest voice I've ever heard and I was unable to tell if I had dreamed it or really had received that terrible phone call.

I guess it seems strange to say, then, that I like this version better and never want to go back to those old, vacant nights.