Waking up to the Dream

To all the harsh people and dashers of dreams: You lose. 

When I was cold I allowed you to cover me with your blanket of foreboding and woe, slipping into a trance where what you had to say about me and the ways of the world were true. I fell asleep, pricked by the poison you’d tempted me with, and I lay there dreaming I was awake and wondering how I’d forgotten the rules to my own game.

You should have left well enough alone, you wrinkled and warped trolls and creatures of the dark. You got greedy when you felt my sadness and loss, closing in for the kill without your usual finesse for deception, forgetting that chaos is where I find form. You might have won had you maintained the slow and steady degradation of my soul, for I was beginning to believe I’d gone mad. 

But you stepped it up, going for my jugular because you thought I’d been beaten down when all I was doing was pausing to catch my breath. You forget this isn’t my first enchanted forest, or you my first monsters.  

Chaos is my friend. I understand it. I find the form in it. All great dreams are born from chaos. You were under the false impression that the nightmares you were serving would break me with overwhelm. You underestimated me, and overestimated your own powers because in your moment of triumph, you gave me the antidote to the hypnotic tapestry you’d so cleverly and patiently woven. The depth of your own despair was your undoing.

I could have led you from those depths but you chose your own voices. You believe your own deception because it’s one that is shared by so many of your kind. As harsh as your words have been for me, I can only imagine how much harsher they are for yourself. You believe the only way for you to live with that unbearable pain is to invite others to share in it. I know this for I was once like you.

You are strong. Strong, and powerful enough in numbers to have poisoned me beyond hope. You were almost strong enough to pull me into your mediocrity. In the end your deceit has failed and all your cobwebs of confusion are nothing more than the tattered wisps of your own unlived dreams, swinging in the dead air of ancient decaying tree limbs.

I am the light that pierced your darkness and reminded you that you’re here for another reason. I am the mirror in which you see your own failings, the reflection that you blame for your despair and desperation.  I am strong enough to stand for you but your fear of the pain is greater than your desire for relief. You thought to bring me into the fold but instead have made me even stronger to stand against the dark.

Let your failure to destroy my light awaken you from your poisoned trance. Leave the enchanted forest. Don’t let the trolls win.