This morning I woke up again with the weight of the world on my chest and my eyes were wet with actual tears. Isn’t it ironic how the only matter that makes it from the dream world to the other side are tears? Our ancestors were right, November is the time when the boundary between the worlds is at its thinnest and most fragile, when every separation, every crack in the universe is felt with particular acuteness. November is a long process of falling apart. The sequence of days and dates: first, the shift to the winter time – the early darkness, the elections, the 1000 days of war, the anniversary of two revolutions (and a long forgotten anniversary of another one), finally the Holodomor remembrance have ended in one long heartbreaking dream. I also notice that dreams, the ones that feel like another kind of reality, more immediate and uninhibited than my waking reality, often come at the end of the three-week cycle, just before my next therapy appointment.

In my dream, I was having a very big party. Not just any party, but some kind of reconciliatory fest meant to bring together family and community after a rift or some sort of tragedy, meant to make things right. There were many people and the walls of the room were warm chestnut brown, the windows were big and there was grey autumn lights outside – it looked nothing like my house, but I knew it was my home. There were many children, most of them dark-haired, loud and rambunctious. There was loud music. I was waiting for someone, anxiously. Other people at the party told me they wouldn’t come, that I should just enjoy myself, but I was posted on the sofa in the middle of the room, playing with children and keeping an eye on the door. At some point, they came. The party went on, but it stopped for me. There were three of them: a man and two dark-haired, sad-looking women. The man looked nothing like anyone I know. To be honest, he looked like Frank Gallager from Shameless, which may be explained by the fact that I’ve been binge-watching Shameless for the past three months. The women looked a little bit like the Turkish woman from my previous dream, but I didn’t recognize them. Their presence shook me. I got up from the couch and came up to the man and clung to him and started crying with the kind of cry that fills all your chest and makes it difficult to breathe. I woke up slowly, as if emerging from the depth, with my chest still aching and my eyes wet.

Something else I remember from this night is half-waking from another dream, while it was still dark, and telling myself “They need to learn how to live in darkness. This is the way we’re heading. We know how to do it, we’ve learned, they need to learn from us.” I think by “we” I referred to the Eastern Europe and to all we’ve been through during my lifespan and before. Who are “they”?