Dreaming IRL

Is this a fucking joke? Is this real life?

Before I started taking medication to help me sleep, I never dreamed. Or I never remembered them, not since I was very young. Then I had only one dream, a nightmare that lasted for two years.
Now, I dream almost every night and often remember them vividly. Sometimes people I have known a very long time ago, or not very well are in them. Sometimes I do not even make an appearance. I wake up too soon, or in the case of nightmares not soon enough. But I always am hoping that the answer for them will appear to me when I least expect it.

In just the past few days, my life has felt like a dream that I am unable to wake up from. It is senseless, although all of the people I know well and in places I am familiar are present. I was on shaky ground already, I know. But I had things to hold onto, solid things of which now I am unsure and do not trust.

I am in shock. I am in mourning, for all that almost was and now will never be. Wounds I thought I had healed from are being ripped open and I don't know how to stop the bleeding. I don't know how to do anything else but feel this way.

Somewhere inside me, I know, is a will to survive. Always a survivor. Like my mom and the other women in my family. My sisters, aunts and grandmothers. Warriors, each of them.
We have survived and so will continue to because it is all we know.

let-your-hair-down, road-trip-across-the-country type of women
strong, “We didn’t need him anyway” living kind of women
always there to catch you when you fall super women

It's just hard, you know? Each time you are shaken to your core. You are broken and must rebuild. It doesn't get easier like you might think it should. It doesn't always teach you something or make you stronger. It just is and it's hard and it's happening to you.