Dreaming, Floating

I am dreaming…

In the dream, I am floating on my back on the surface of a large, peaceful lake, like a feather that has fallen from the tail of a large raven. The sky above me is dark with only the stars visible. The water laps against my ears but I can still hear the sounds of the night. Bats flit around above me, hunting.  There is a choir of crickets and frogs adding to the serenity.

I am floating, relaxed, not afraid of sinking, not afraid of drowning, not worried about the deepness of the lake.  I am there simply to float on the water with no other purpose.

I am floating and that is why I know even in the dream that I am dreaming. In my waking hours, I cannot swim and never learned how to when I was younger. I have a deep-rooted fear of water.  Sometimes, even the most irrational fears are passed down to us by our parents. My father was in the Navy, he told me, but he couldn’t swim. I wonder who passed this fear down to him.

I wake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. Soon, I will, I hope, fall back asleep and hope that I will dream of floating again.

Maybe the source of this dream, if there is a source I can trace, is my life in the waking hours; the job I have, the people, the need for more.  I feel like, sometimes, I am drowning.  I am drowning in a ocean of my own making.  


And all I want to do is float or swim…