🌍The World Ended, and I Survived

July 18, 2025 TeaLeave a comment

Last night, my subconscious handed me the kind of dream you wake from in tears—the kind that isn’t just a dream, but a reckoning. I’m still holding pieces of it in my chest, so I’m writing it down before it slips through the cracks. I think it wants to be remembered.

It began with the end of the world.
Something had struck the Earth—an impact so massive it fractured the surface and awakened creatures from beneath. These weren’t metaphors pretending to be monsters—they were towering humanoid beings who plucked humans from the earth like weeds and devoured them. It felt like the future, but everyone I knew was their current age. Myself included.

Oddly, there wasn’t much on the Earth’s surface anymore—just vast tunnel systems carved into the ground like ant colonies. These subterranean mazes became the last refuge of humanity. But the giants? They had no trouble pulling apart the walls of our safe havens to reach in and feast.

Dustin (my boyfriend) was there. He told me I wasn’t taking it seriously enough, that we needed to move deeper underground. Before descending, we dropped our car keys into mounted tackle-box-like containers near empty parking lots—communal stashes for anyone who survived. A last act of sacrifice for strangers we’d never meet.

We went down.

The tunnels were strange and alive. Elevators opened at intervals to reveal chaotic scenes—people drunk, stripped of inhibition, clinging to pleasure in the face of doom. Dustin grabbed some alcohol and offered me a can. I declined.

“I don’t drink anymore,” I said. “I don’t want to numb myself.”

We kept going. Ross, one of Dustin’s friends, met us there, dragging a wagon full of booze. Then my girls arrived—light in the middle of darkness. They ran to me joyfully and wrapped me in hugs. I asked how they were. They said they were just fine and weren’t scared. They were going with their dad somewhere. They had each other.

They offered me their birthday money “in case I survived.” And just like that, my heart caved in. They didn’t know money wouldn’t mean much anymore, but they knew they loved me and that they wanted me to be taken care of if I lived. They seemed to fully understand that it was unlikely that any of us would live, and yet, they were mature, balanced, and light hearted. In that moment I was aware that I had never felt so simultaneously proud and devastated. I kissed their heads and watched them run off, small beams of light glowing in the dark. I held on to the moment, gazing down the corridor they ran down long after they disappeared around the corner.

Then—time skipped, or perhaps I just forgot what happened in between.

The event had already happened. Earth had been hit again. We had survived.

I tore off desperately navigating through rubble and ruin to the place where the girls said they’d be. The tunnels were collapsed. Everything was eerily quiet. Nothing was left but dust and ruin. I was panicked, but still held a thread of hope.

I stood in the place they should have been, but it seemed impossible that anyone could survive the scene I took in. I didn’t even know where to begin, but I was fully prepared to dig through the rubble with my bare hands until I found them. I got on my knees and began digging. I had barely begun when I heard a voice. A narrator. Calm, cruel, and kind all at once:

“Aliza was badly wounded from the first impact, but had not told her mother or complained. Both girls were very brave and supported one another. They were afraid but filled with love and died in one another’s arms.”

I was shattered shattered. I crumpled into the fetal position and sobbed.

That’s where he found me—Dustin and Duane, both are my boyfriends’, as one. They were the same person now, morphing in and out of each other. Two sides of the same steady hand. He/they scooped me up like a child and carried me to the surface.

Together, we walked to the key boxes. I didn’t know where we were going—I only knew we had to go.

Dustin/Duane dug through the boxes full of keys while I sat on the curb near the box and whimpered. Something prompted me to look up. I could barely see through my tears and swollen eyes. The box of keys seemed to be glowing in a spotlight, and a flash of yellow between the pole and the box caught my eye. I stood on weak legs and pulled it out.

It was the birthday card my mom sent Aliza. As I opened it, money gracefully floated around my legs and settled at my feet. Hastily scribbled around my mom’s message, the girls had written me a note. I had never seen something as beautiful as their wobbly little misshapen letters and their little names. Their message read:

We love you mom. Yore the best mom in the hole world. We want you to have this and have fun if you live. We hope you live. We hope we get to see you agen.
Love Zarah and Aliza

I sunk to my knees, my children’s money still scattered around me, and sobbed so hard my spirit broke open. I adored every misspelled word. The card I held in my hand was the greatest expression of love I had every received. I no longer had any possessions, but even if I did, this card would remain my most cherished.

Questions raced through my mind. How did they do it? How did they know where Dustin/Duane and I had parked the car and stashed our keys? Did they do it after they had offered me the money and I refused? Did they return to the surface after that? If so, did they get caught to close to the surface? Was that the reason they died? Clearly, they left it here with complete faith that if I lived I would find it. Again, I was gripped with deep pride and suffocating grief.

Once again I was absolutely inconsolable, so Dustin/Duane scooped me up and put me in the passenger seat of whatever vehicle they had managed to secure. They began driving. As we drove my perspective suddenly changed. I saw myself then, from Dustin/Duane’s eyes. I could feel their helplessness, their heartbreak, their quiet desperation to comfort me.

And then I woke up.

💛 Dream Afterword: Surviving the Unspeakable

This didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like being stripped down to my core. This dream excavated the deepest caverns of my soul. I experienced a level of rawness I can’t face in the daylight, so my subconscious dressed it up in monsters, tunnels, and birthday cards.

This dream was about grief, surrender, and unshakable, enduring love. I got up close and personal with what it means to live through devastation and still keep going. About how tightly I hold my children. About how I fear losing them even though I know I can’t control everything. About how much love I still carry from all the versions of myself who were “hit” and had to rebuild from rubble.

The car keys? Letting go of control. Sacrifice.

The tunnels? The inner labyrinth of fear, love, and responsibility.

The giants? My own monsters, awake and hungry.

And my girls? My heart. My light. The innocence and trust I am sometimes too scared to lean into.

That card—bright yellow against the wreckage—was the moment grace reached through the ruins. They were gone, and somehow still with me. They were saying:

“It’s okay to live.
It’s okay to feel joy again.
Honor us by truly living.
We never really left you.”

My children gifted me their innocence, trust, and belief in me and the universe. It was the greatest gift I have ever received. They may have even sacrificed themselves to deliver it. Despite my fierce love, I could not protect them from life’s larger forces. They clearly had no expectation that I or anyone else could save them, and they demonstrated a level of surrender, trust, and love that cracked me wide open.

🌊 Epilogue: Aliza, Alive and Glowing

As I finished writing this entry—still wrapped in the ache of that dream, still wiping tears—Aliza walked into the living room.

She stretched, sleepy-eyed, like nothing in the world had shifted, and said,

“Can I watch Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken?”

And I just sat there.
Heart split. Spirit stunned.

Because of all the movies in the world, she chose one about a girl who discovers she’s part of something deep, ancient, and misunderstood. A girl who has power inside her she doesn’t yet understand. A girl from the sea, learning how to swim in her truth.

It didn’t feel like coincidence.
It felt like confirmation.

That she is here.
That she is okay.
That I can let go of the fear just a little.
That love echoes back to us—sometimes in tentacles and plot twists and animated metaphors.

So, yeah.
I let her watch it.
And I cried through the whole thing.

Tree-Climbing Tortoises, Tiny Desks, & An Unexpected Truce

June 20, 2025June 20, 2025 TeaLeave a comment

🐢The Snapping Tortoise That Defied Everything

The dream began at my parents’ home where a gathering of some sort was taking place. There were lots of children of various ages running around, and I distinctly remember my boyfriend’s daughter Keyra being present. It was summer and the gathering of family and friends taking place was very casual and comfortable. It was the kind of gathering so relaxed and engaging that people just drift into your orbit — a friend of a friend shows up, and next thing you know, everyone’s crashing for the night. As the gathering drew to a close, I began pulling blankets from here and there to settle the kids and they flung themselves about truly making themselves at home. Strangely, I knew it was night, but it was bright as day.

Just then I spotted a small tortoise. My parent’s yard is often full of turtles, but this was in the house, and it was clearly a tortoise, not a turtle. This tortoise had an unnaturally tall shell — like it was built for something different. I gathered the kids who hadn’t settled yet to observe this strange creature. They marveled. As we talked the tortoise continued to turn its head and walk toward each person who spoke. I said, “This tortoise is acting sentient — like it knows we’re talking about it.” The words were still in my mouth when it whipped its head in my direction and rushed toward me with incredible speed. I jumped back. It watched me, followed me, and then bit me and refused to let go. I was so puzzled. Why was this tortoise acting like a snapping turtle? I was aware of the bite, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as I expected it to. I walked to the front door with the turtle dangling from my arm. As I tried to peel it off, I accidentally injured it, or maybe it already was — one of its limbs or maybe its head dangled, barely attached. So I paused and waited until I was outside to make another attempt at releasing the… snapping tortoise? Honestly, I’m not sure what else to call it.

The release took some effort and when I finally set it down, it turned… and again moved toward me with such speed that I recoiled and fell on my butt. It was unreasonably, alarmingly fast for a tortoise! I ran inside and closed the door quickly behind me. I turned to spy on it through the window beside the door, and to my amazement, it was climbing a tree, not just with its feet, but also pulling itself along with its teeth!

Yes, a tortoise. Climbing. A. Tree.
And I just stood there, stunned — like I was watching a sacred omen with a side of surrealism and a dash of “what in the shell is going on here!?”

🎭 The Theatrical Threat

I recovered from the shock of watching a sentient snapping tortoise climb a tree and turned back to get the rest of the children settled, but I was interrupted— aggressors of some sort with odd looking weapons were silently sneaking into the house. I slipped by them and back out the front door. I observed them from a short distance. Their weapons were nonsensical—a bizarre assortment of objects morphed together—a tangle of lawn equipment and household items. I had the odd sense that this had occurred before and everyone was fine. My feelings were a mixture of “Act! Do something!” but also, “There’s nothing to worry about.”

I circled around the back of the house while seeing and hearing things that resembled real violence. It was surreal, dangerous, but also… theatrical.

I reentered the house through the lower level on the back side of the house where the children slept and I quickly and quietly roused them. They didn’t seem afraid or alarmed. They just sprang into action fighting the emerging figures wielding odd weapons.

I heard yelling from the yard, so I took off outside once again.

⚔️ Space Weapons & Tiny Desks

I ended up in the driveway with a younger male English teacher I work with and a friend of his. We were grappling. I was unarmed, outnumbered, and dodging a weapon that made no sense. It looked like someone had ripped parts off the International Space Station and said, “Here, duel with this.”
It was intense… until suddenly it wasn’t.

My parents drove up, hopped out of the car and started a totally casual conversation with us as we dueled. My co-worker and his friend started laughing and lowering their weapons like the whole thing was a big joke. Before I knew it, we were both flat on our backs in the driveway, laughing. My head rested on his arm — a full-on post-battle cuddle. I didn’t know why we were laughing, but it felt real — like we were old friends sharing a moment. His galactic weapon laid at his side, and it had split open. He reached into his broken weapon and pulled out…

A tiny paper desk?

He laid it gently on my chest. I stared at it, stunned… and then we both cracked up all over again.

“Wait, it gets better,” he said, and then he proceeded to reach into his weapon and pull out dozens of tiny office supplies the size of my fingernail. They were impossibly fragile, and he laid each one of the tiny trinkets delicately, almost ceremonially, on my chest.

“The canister of keyboard air spray is my favorite,” he said as he handed it to me.

I sat up slightly and leaned over him to get a better look at his Mary Poppins-meets-space-junk weapon. What I saw inside the weapon’s hull were individual compartments brimming with paper office supplies.

This was his arsenal. Paperwork.

🧠 Symbol Soup (Because My Subconscious is a Weirdo)

The snapping tortoise:
He broke all the rules. Tortoises symbolize patience, wisdom, protection, and longevity, but this one was not patient, it was fast. It was not wise, but rather sentient and defiant. He didn’t protect me, he bit me!

The tortoise defied all my expectations. I expected slow and grounded, but I got fast and feisty! Rather than ancient wisdom, I got evolved wisdom. I get the sense that my inner teacher is no longer content to whisper in the background. It would rather chase me up a tree while yelling, “We’re not doing it that way anymore!” Something within me is clearly trying to capture my attention and let me know that whatever I expect, it’s not going down that way. The message of this tortoise: “I love that you thought I’d always wait quietly… but surprise, bitch, I run now.”
The “attackers”: Absurd to the core. Perhaps they represent external pressures, judgements, outdated systems, and past influences that once felt dangerous, but now feel more like background noise — easy to navigate if I trust myself and those I love. While the “battle” was evident, the energy was intense, but I never truly felt that anyone was in real danger.
The coworker fight that turns to laughter: Conflict with someone who “speaks my language” (English teacher) that dissolves into intimacy and shared absurdity. The fight reveals not rage but tiny systems of order and attempts at control. Maybe some conflicts I’ve perceived as threatening are actually attempts at organization in disguise?
Tiny paper supplies: Perfection. Bureaucracy in microcosm. The weapon becomes a harmless, delicate filing system — as if to say, “This isn’t war. This is just poorly managed communication and the illusion of order and control.”

✨The Final Sip:

This dream walked the razor edge between danger and delight. I was the protector, the strategist, the one who ran toward the chaos to gather the children and face the absurd.
And in the end?
The real enemy wasn’t violence — it was the comical, theatrical illusion of threat.

Even the tortoise, in all its biting weirdness, just wanted to follow me, climb with me. My attackers shared a laugh with me. I think this was my subconscious’s playful way of saying: everything is absurd, nothing is what it seems, and that is precisely the point.

Honestly, I have to hand it to my subconscious. The symbolism, the set design, the slow-burn comedy arc — 10/10, would dream again.

Dream Diaries

✈️🌞 Blue Sky Monday & the Ghosts of Almost

June 19, 2025June 19, 2025 TeaLeave a comment

✧･ﾟ: I asked for help remembering my dreams before I went to sleep. I didn’t sleep well—but one stayed with me. :✧

🏠 I dreamed I was at Justin’s mom’s house.
I haven’t seen or heard from Justin in nearly two decades. He was the best friend of my first crush, Kyle. We all worked together. Justin was kind, artistic, and flirted like it was breathing—but I always thought he was too good for me. I was too hung up on Kyle, too tangled in insecurity, to believe someone like Justin could truly want me.

🎨 I still remember one night in real life—
We went tagging walls after work. (Yes, graffiti. Yes, I was awful at it.) I’d planned to stay at Kyle’s, but he bailed. Justin offered me a place to crash instead. He didn’t live with his parents at the time, so I’ve never actually seen his mom’s house. We shared a bed, got a little handsy, and I remember feeling a confusing cocktail of desire, guilt, and shame. I’d lied to my parents. I still wanted Kyle. And yet… Justin sensed all of these things, and I was thankful I didn’t have to verbalize my internal torture. Instead, he chose to meet my vulnerability and inner turmoil in kind. He handed me a poem he’d written—splattered with his own blood. Even then, I knew it meant something more than just words. He was handing me the deepest most wounded parts of him. Trusting me with his vulnerability. The final lines of his poem haunt me to this day:

Years later, I still have it.
Or rather, I have my version.

🖋️ Sunshine & Blue Sky Monday

By Justin, circa 2003

So this is love?
And this is a beautiful day
Why don’t you understand?
It’s like divorce in a happy home
Translate
Have love but feel alone
That’s the me I’ve known
Then don’t you see
What’s a sunshine and blue sky Monday?
It gets ruined anyway
But tell me to live in it
Tell a salt water fish to live in fresh water
Will I sink or swim?
So this is me
And this is a beautiful day
From what I understand
It’s like bloodshed on white carpet
The sickest thing I could say
And kill a ruined sunshine and blue sky Monday.

Even after all this time, I remember those last 3 lines almost by heart. I remember the feeling of them. The poem read like a cry against all he’d been told love should be. Clearly, his experience of love had fallen painfully short.

Back then, we all used a shared online forum to post poetry and half-formed thoughts. I copied his words down into my journal, but I made it mine—scribbled the lines across a page with a bright yellow sun in one corner and streaks of blue sky in oil pastel. Terrible art, honestly. But such a different energy.

His version was raw, literal, bleeding.
Mine was soft, messy, trying to bring light to what hurt.
I think I was trying to save it.
Or soften it.
Or maybe I just couldn’t hold how dark it really was.
I wanted so badly to fix it—to erase the ache in his heart—that I splashed bright colors over his pain and called it care.

✈️ In the dream, we were grown. At his mom’s house. It was small, cozy, worn but homey. My mom might’ve been there too.

Justin and I were about to leave for a trip—heading to the airport, passports in hand, buzzing with excitement. I don’t know where we were going—only that it felt big. Overseas, maybe. A beginning.

🕰️ I was flitting around the house doing last-minute things. I told him I’d go home to shower before we left, but time was slipping. He gently mentioned it a few times. I could see his concern that we’d miss our flight. I remember thinking: He doesn’t know this about me yet—how I always cut things close.
But I didn’t shrink from it.
I thought, I accept that about me. I get why it’s hard for him.
I skipped the shower.

🚙 He pulled the car around—some boxy navy-blue thing, maybe a Jeep or a Subaru—and whipped it into the driveway dramatically. Trying to impress me. Trying to say hurry. I smiled silently: Wow, okay, Mr. Drama. It was sweet.

I hugged my daughters goodbye. They were trying not to cry. They are so damn brave and understanding. I told them they’d be okay with Grandma, they’d have fun, they’d be safe. But I felt that tug—that ache all mothers feel—of guilt and longing. Still, I left.

His kids were there too, a little older than mine, hopping out of the car with their bags while it was still moving.
We were all in motion. No pause. No time to question. Just go.

We drove off toward the airport. I recall feeling happy, at peace, and excited. I thought about the book I’d packed for plane and how I knew Justin would ask about it and be curious. It was a spiritually based book of some sort- maybe the one I’d bought in real life the day before- Being Ram Dass. I thought about how nice it was that he showed interest and that we could have conversations with meaning.
We never got to our destination.
I woke up before the journey began.

🌓 Reflection

There’s something in this dream about missed connections—not just romantically, though that thread was there. It felt like a long-awaited departure from who I used to be. In the dream I was confident, comfortable, and self-assured. I wasn’t chasing Justin’s approval. I believed that I was worthy of his love, and I wasn’t interested in changing myself to be accepted.

Maybe Justin isn’t the point.
Maybe he’s just a symbol—for the versions of me I didn’t believe were worthy.
The parts I thought were too much. Too little. Too late.
He represents the life paths I never chose, the risks I didn’t take.
The quiet, comforting masculine energy I didn’t yet know how to receive.

I can’t help reflecting on Justin’s poem and how the dream prompted my remembrance. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I not only copied and saved the poem, but that I was able to find it more than 20 years later. Clearly the younger version of me didn’t know how to hold someone else’s darkness without painting over it. A coping mechanism, no doubt. I wasn’t strong enough yet to hold all that pain—so I painted it a different hue and believed that was healing.

⌛ There’s also something here about time.
How I always push it. How I trust myself to make it, even when others get nervous.
But in the dream, I didn’t shape-shift or people-please.
I just accepted me. And I held compassion for how my pacing might feel on the other end.

👶🏼👧🏽 The kids are deeply symbolic too.
They are the ones I leave behind to chase something I couldn’t quite name.
That part aches.
Because growth often asks us to loosen our grip.
Even on the people, places, and identities we love the most.

🔮 Dream Diary Prompt

Sometimes our dreams show us the roads we didn’t take.
What “what if” do you carry with you, and how does it shape who you are now?

What part of your younger self are you still getting to know?
What would you say to them if you could take that trip back?

💬 Drop your reflections in the comments below. I love reading what your dreams stir up, too.

Dream Diaries

Extreme Home Makeover: Subconscious Edition

May 7, 2025June 24, 2025 TeaLeave a comment

The dream took place in a house I recognized immediately—even though it looked a little less run-down than I remembered. In waking life, this place used to be a tiny, worn-out gas station with just two pumps, awkwardly wedged between the first apartment my ex-husband and I shared on our own, and the Culver’s he worked for during college and now owns. In the dream, the gas station had transformed into a modest white house with a carport attached, as if my brain had done a little remodeling on a memory I didn’t know I still carried. Inside it was sort of craftsman style- dark, but homey. Out front, a carport jutted out like an arm doing a stiff handshake, held up by a single brick pillar down the center in the shape of an “I” that screamed, “I am the backbone of this operation!”

I opened the front door and spotted two kids—maybe nine and eleven—kneeling at the base of the pillar, pulling bricks out like it was Jenga for future engineers. They looked up like, “Hi! We’re here to dismantle your reality one brick at a time!” And I, for reasons only dream logic understands, smiled and went back inside.

Cue the boyfriend, frowning like a dad at a suspicious noise.

“What’s going on?”

“Just a couple kids messing with the bricks,” I said with the confidence of someone definitely not concerned that their house might fall over.

He raised a metaphorical eyebrow. “Shouldn’t we stop them? What if it collapses? What if they get hurt?”

“Nah,” I said, like a chill oracle who just got a message from the Beyond. “It’s fine.”

He did the shrug-walk-away combo that means, “I’ll allow it, but I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

Time seemed to pass quickly. Several dream hours later I opened the front door to check on the boys again and…plot twist: the entire pillar vanished. Houdini-style. Poof. Gone. No dust, no rubble, just empty air and an architectural impossibility. The carport stood tall, levitating like it had recently converted to a new-age belief system.

I wandered out, blinking at the miracle-turned-mystery. Not only was the pillar gone, but now some siding on the house was damaged and wires were exposed—like the veins of the home had been uncovered. I didn’t panic. I just stared, stunned and squinting at the raw, humming edges of something I’d never thought I’d see.

I heard construction noises to my right and intuitively walked in that direction. My jaw still hung slightly ajar in disbelief. I’m fairly certain I was in shock. I crossed the street and found a construction crew hard at work on the neighbor’s house (also white, also smugly intact). Except now it looked like an ant farm. Tunnels, chambers, and winding inner structures. And wouldn’t you know it? The bricks looked very familiar.

I asked one of the workers, a tall man in navy blue, if those were, in fact, my bricks. He shrugged like a bureaucrat in a budget meeting and mumbled something about just doing his job. Another builder, a red-faced ginger in an orange shirt, looked annoyed that I was interrupting his mission to install my former security system into someone else’s underground clubhouse. He was more diplomatic, but the answer was the same: not my problem, lady.

And still, I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t even confused anymore. Just… aware. Like I should note this and move on to the next issue- what to do about the exposed wires and damaged siding. I would certainly appreciate my bricks being returned- that would certainly make me feel more secure. But it did appear the car port was mostly fine, so…moving on. I shrugged and went home.

Interpretation (a.k.a. overthinking is my spiritual hobby):

This dream had layers. Like lasagna. Or an emotionally complex onion.

The house? That’s me. A metaphor for my current self—all the routines, beliefs, roles, and illusions I consider structural.

The pillar? Probably my job or really any of the many roles I’ve been holding onto like a caffeine-deprived squirrel clutching its last acorn. Roles like teacher, mother, caretaker, partner -they feel central to who I am. Stabilizing. But surprise: the dream kids removed the pillar-my rolls-, and nothing collapsed.

Those kids? Little disruptors. Inner child energy. Breaking generational trauma energy. Unconcerned with adult concepts like “load-bearing” and “consequences.” Maybe they represent curiosity, playfulness, or a subconscious nudge toward deconstruction. They just wanted to see what would happen.

The boyfriend’s alarmed reaction? That’s my inner protector. The voice that says, “What if this change ruins everything?” It means well. But in this dream, I overrule it with a cosmic shrug.

The exposed wires (the house’s “veins”)? My raw emotional systems. Uncovered. Untamed. Kind of beautiful. The truth behind the siding. This felt less like damage and more like a reveal. A backstage pass to my own inner mechanics.

And the builders? Maybe society. Maybe other parts of myself. Either way, they took my old bricks and used them in an entirely different structure. I wasn’t invited to the repurposing party. But also—I didn’t need to be.

Because here’s the kicker:

My house didn’t fall.

Turns out, I wasn’t being held up by that pillar after all. It was just there for aesthetics. For the illusion of safety. For the idea that something was holding me up when really, I was holding myself all along.

Maybe the moral of the story is: sometimes the universe sends two imaginary children to casually deconstruct your coping mechanisms, and instead of screaming, you make tea and watch the house levitate.

And maybe that’s growth 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Tag: dreams

🌍The World Ended, and I Survived