“Sometimes the only way to forget everything is to go to sleep.” Grandma told me, her voice soft and whispery. She pushed a lock of chocolate brown hair off my forehead.

“Where is sleep?” I asked, my curious eyes as wide as a doe.

She smiled softly. “A place where dreams come true.”

———-

I lay in bed, my body unable to stop vigorously shaking. It isn’t cold, quite the opposite. Sticky sweat is running down my forehead. I push the sheets off of me and lay there, trying to catch my breath.

If only grandma prepared me for this.

Sleep is supposed to be a place where dreams come true.

So why is it whenever I visit the shadows haunt me?

The shadows of past, present, and future.

Like that one story I vaguely remember from childhood. Something about the ghosts, or were they spirits, of time? I’m not sure.

I gasp for breath and wipe the sweat off my forehead with my arm.

I wonder if the doctors sell a cure for nightmares. Maybe a medicine that will give me dreams of unicorns and sparkles. Memories of good days. Peaceful days. Childhood.

Or maybe that would hurt more.

I’m not sure.

I’m never sure anymore.

Because I never get anything right.

I groan and sit up in bed, pulling my legs over the side and willing for them to hold me up.

I stand.

It has to be almost midnight, I can still see the moon softly flooding through the curtains.

So what am I supposed to do now, not sleep?

That idea sounds pretty good.

I slump back into the bed.

Maybe grandma was wrong.

Maybe dreams are supposed to haunt us, teach us lessons the hard way.

But I’ve already learned this lesson in the real world.

So why do they keep reminding me?

I’d give up anything to be able to remove the aching sensation that lingers in my heart. The one that makes it feel like it’s struggling to beat. I’d give up anything to not have my lungs feel like their bursting inside of me after so many nights in a puddle of helplessness.

So why won’t they give me a chance?

Grandma never prepared me for this.

What was I supposed to do when the land of dreams failed?