DREAM AWAY

Once upon a time there was a man who dreamed so much. How much? He dreamed so much reality and dream world started overlapping and he could not separate them. He was no longer aware of what was real and a dream. His dream state was fuller, more interesting, more colorful, more of everything. If he thought of something it became real or was it in a dream? He was missing work all he wanted to do was sleep. It consumes him, nothing in the daily grind called life entertained him. Movies were bland whether on T. V. or the movie screen. He had lost touch with the real world, he was losing weight his face was pale and eyes sunken. He lost his job, he was helpless and hopeless.
          Sleeping pills no longer work he was unable to sleep. He sat down in a chair after weeks of only momentarily naps no longer able to dream. No longer able to function as a human being he sat down in a chair to wither into nothingness.
          How long he set in the wooden rocker he did not know. He tried moving his hand, nothing happened, he tried moving his leg, nothing. He could not feel anything, no cold no warmth, no heartbeat. He could not will his eyes to blink. The only sense of surroundings was a movie screen that was blank just like in a theatre before a movie, dark with only a faint hint of a white wall to wall screen visible right in front of him.
          He felt nothing inside, no bodily form. He had become the chair in a movie house, an old time wooden chair.
          The screen comes to life. He was reliving the shock of being born, pushed from his mother to coldness, to sounds he could not understand. Movement, pain, noise.
          Every pain, every unsavory emotion, every bad word ever spoken to him was heard and felt. It starts at birth and ends at the time he sat down in the chair to die. It replays over and over, he could not stop it.
          He did not exist, he existed only as the frames of his life flashed by slower and slower. He holds no sense of time. Only repeats of his lifetime of painful moments that never stop. This was to be his punishment for abuse of a simple pleasure.
         The frames on the screen stopped, darkness, only darkness. It was to be darkness forever an emptiness of nothingness. Why not end? Many lifetimes of pain was relived, why eternal darkness, even the pains of life was better than darkness.
          The screen slowly comes to life frame by frame until real speed, real time begins. But now it's different, you see life as it was. The goodness as well as the pains of life. However the highs are higher than you remember them. The spirit of Christmas was fresher, brighter fuller. The taste of turkey on Thanksgiving was wonderfully savory. Pumpkin pie was out of this world. Colors of flowers was euphoric. The dog licking your hand was so real. Babies are a bundle of cuteness to be held and shared. Love well love was off the charts unmeasurable. Family, full of love for you. Friends, ah friends. Work, what is work? Work is the way to exist that makes everything else achievable!
          You think, what was it about life that I found so hard that I needed to escape from? If only!!! The magic thought. You awake to find yourself able to wiggle your toes, to run your hand over your face, you feel your heartbeat. You shut your alarm clock off and jump into the shower and sing with all the happiness you feel. Ain't life grand!!!