Memories are a funny thing. Each time you revisit something in your head, you're reconstructing that memory from pieces and fragments that you placed elsewhere - sometimes those pieces are probably exactly what happened, but other times your brain can't find the authentic piece you made and basically creates a new image to run along the celluloid of your memory. This means that the more you remember something, the less you can actually trust that it's the real moment that you experienced.

Don't worry - I have a point.

My mind is packed with such vivid imagery that I can sometimes feel my night and day dreams shuffling in with my memories like a stack of cards. Lately, more than a couple of times, I've riffled through my grey matter and retraced a memory that was actually just a dream. A moment I shared with someone that didn't exist. It's unnerving at times, mildly heartbreaking at others. I actually have this one dream that I can recall better than any memory I've made so far. It's been five or six years now, but there was a silhouette of a woman. No distinct details of her face, just the shape of her dress and the cut of her hair and the feeling I had wanting to burst from my chest just knowing that she existed. I can remember the floral pattern along the bodice and the stark white Peter Pan collar. But what's most gripping, the most intense footprint in my head from that dream, was the feeling of loss once I woke up. I knew I'd never be with her again. It's odd to say, sad even to know, that I'll never feel that happy or depressed again as I did within that 48 hours. I've been in love. I've been shit all over. This was still nothing compared to the dream.

So sometimes, when I'm getting nostalgic, I revisit the relationships I've had. And then I get to one where I just remember the feeling and vague, yet crystal clear, details of this moment I shared inside my own mind and try to play it off as something real, when it was just a fantasy. That is, of course, if I'm not actually sending myself a dream theater from the future in hopes to hone my skills and start to build a blueprint of accepting future information in a past brain, therefore successfully lubing up my unconscious mind to make myself a super genius and profitable so that my future life is super rad.

Then again, I do indulge in way too much science-fiction.

Also: I think I'm going to title my short story collection "Thick Fiction" - at least I feel better about it than "Chronicles of a Heavy Sleeper" - we'll see, though. I haven't even begun the first round of edits.