Here it was, my whole life splayed out before me. Some days, just for an instant, I felt like I could do anything. The problem was, it felt so good I dwelled in that feeling and did nothing at all. Because as soon as I made a move—to play music or go for a walk—the feeling left.

It only happened a few times a year. It was a feeling of unlimited possibility that tingled throughout my whole body and started in my chest. It made me feel expansive, powerful and young. If only I could harness that feeling I could make something of myself but chances were, I wouldn’t.

That’s because I’d seen my future in a dream before and the dream told me how it would end: it said your fear will drag you down. In my dream I drowned; the water filled my lungs and I sank to the bottom. The fear coiled around my ankles and pulled me down. Was the dream a prophesy or a warning? What agency did I have in its fulfillment?

The image of the owl’s ghostly face in the pale morning light stayed with me late into the day. How it watched me from the shadows in a tree. What did it signify? Or was the owl just an owl?

I’d come back to my morning walk but it was still dark in the woods and I’d wandered off course, found myself bleary-eyed and confused, headed a different way. Sometimes when I’m walking in the early morning I’ll look down at my feet and feel disconnected from them, like it’s a dream where my mind and body are out of sync: the body won’t respond when prompted or when it does, the motion feels stilted like a hand puppet. At times my whole life felt like that, disconnected, like I was watching myself from afar.

The way the owl first took flight and then settled into a tree. It moved slow motion-like, the way raptors appear to labor when they fly because of their size. The owl’s look had a weight to it too. I hooted, to bait it into calling back, but the owl just watched me without a sound. And as I walked beneath it I lost the owl in the shadows but sensed it still, its head turned unnaturally, eyes ringed in white.

I often thought about that dream where I died and wondered what it meant, or if it was true. I had to look at my life and consider the last 30-some years and how much fear played a role.

The size of my world felt bigger on the inside because most of who I was was hidden there. The way to get it out was through my voice—but I had to scour my insides and accept the results. And I feared there’d be a lot less than I imagined, that the person I imagined wasn’t the person I’d find. Could I live with that?

It was like one of those dreams where you’re frozen in fear and can’t move, trapped by a fate you feel in your gut. It said your fear will drag you down, and it would. Part of me knew the truth enough to say it but another part failed to listen. Which side I believed, that’s how it would end.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, existentialism, identity, mid-life crisis