DREAM ME

Dream Me: Chapter 4 -The Weight I Carry

It happened on a Wednesday.

I was eating instant noodles at the kitchen counter, head bowed, scrolling through emails I didn’t want to answer. The kind that pile up like bricks until you’re buried beneath them.

Dream Me was perched on the windowsill, silent, watching. She had a way of sitting like she didn’t weigh anything, as though the world itself bent to hold her.

Finally, she spoke. “Why do you punish yourself like this?”

I didn’t look up. “I’m working. People don’t just… sit around all day being ethereal.”

“You call this working?” Her voice cut sharp. “This is surviving. This is crawling through life on scraped knees and convincing yourself you’re standing tall.”

Something in me snapped. I slammed the laptop shut, noodles forgotten. “What do you want from me? To quit my job? To run off into some fantasy world where nothing hurts? That’s not life. That’s delusion.”

She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “No. I want you to remember.”

“Remember what?”

She slid down from the sill, her bare feet making no sound on the floor. She moved closer, closer, until I could see my reflection swimming in her eyes. “Remember who you were before the weight.”

The room shifted.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in my kitchen anymore. I was standing in my childhood bedroom, sunlight pouring in through lace curtains. My sketchbooks lay open on the floor, pages alive with color and wild designs I had once dreamed of turning into art.

On the desk, an acceptance letter to an art school I never attended.

My chest tightened. “Stop,” I whispered.

Dream Me’s voice was everywhere and nowhere at once. “You buried this. You told yourself it was childish, impractical. You traded it for stability, for silence. But the truth is, you were afraid. Afraid of failing. Afraid of wanting too much.”

Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. I shook my head. “I couldn’t, my parents, money, and life doesn’t work that way.”

“Life works any way you choose to shape it,” she countered. “But you chose fear. And you’ve been carrying it ever since.”

I dropped to my knees, clutching the old sketchbook. The paper smelled of dust and forgotten summers. My drawings stared back at me, younger versions of myself screaming to be remembered.

The weight in my chest felt unbearable.

Dream Me crouched beside me, her hand ghosting over mine. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to free you. But you can’t be free until you admit the truth.”

And the truth, horrible and undeniable, cracked out of me in a sob:

“I gave up on myself.”

Her smile was sad but proud, like a teacher watching a student finally solve the riddle. “There it is.”

The scene flickered. My kitchen snapped back into place, but the sketchbook remained heavy in my hands. Real. Tangible.

I didn’t remember bringing it from my parents’ house. But here it was.

Dream Me stood, luminous in the dim light. “You don’t have to keep carrying the weight. You can put it down. But if you can’t, then I will.”

Her words lingered long after she faded into the shadows of the room.

And for the first time, I wondered if maybe I didn’t want her to fade.