The Life of Dreams

BY VICTORIA AMADOR '25

        I am living The Life of Dreams. I reside in a medieval walled town. My school building has four hundred year old doors and original Italian frescos. My walks are filled with beautiful churches and buildings older than my mind can wrap around. I am here and my dreams came true. I am so grateful I get to experience this.

        Yet, when I lie in bed, in my little room six thousand miles away from home, and close my eyes, when I think of what I most want, I don’t dream of Italy. I don’t dream of walled towns and ancient frescos, I dream of home.

        I dream of dreaming. A cold winter day spent at home. I lie in bed, cuddled by pounds of pillows and the comfiest, lushest comforter. I lie there, looking out the window and see trees swishing back and forth, covered in snow. My body is so free and light. I’ve never felt more comfortable. The mattress absorbs and cradles me. I am perfectly content to be in my house, on a sleepy sunday, enjoying the simple fact that I am home.

        As I close my eyes in my twin bed on the other side of the world, with a single pillow, feeling cold inside my thin comforter, I dream of sleeping at home. I wonder how wrong I must’ve been to end up so far away from my dreams when they were right there. I was living in them. This dream I chase was a nightmare hiding in plain sight. How blind I’d been. How far I’ve fallen.

        Maybe once I’m home my plentiful pillows will suffocate instead of comfort me, and I’ll dream of Itailian mattresses. A cycle of never ending dreams turned nightmares just to become dreams again.

        Still, I dream. I close my eyes and imagine something better. Too naive to know that maybe what I’m living in is the dream, and I am hoping for a nightmare.