In my dreams, I see a populace. The streets are busy as always, some people standing in front of stalls after a long shift, others heading home to sleep. The amalgamation of sound and buzz is something I cannot understand, but it disturbs me. A sound that keeps getting louder.
And the man I see on the pavement: face forward, posture planted. Streets full of people moving ahead of him. As he moves closer, it feels as though he is aflame, close to the sun, which, in hindsight, should have burned me.
I feel overwhelmed by the work and then by the question of whether it will last. Whether I am replaceable. A colleague of mine, some of them are still here, but most of us are fresh recruits. Even though I feel much more stable in my new job, I cannot spend freely. I don't know why.
Sam is startled by a noise. A stuttering emphasis: "It's alright."
The therapist sits in front with his hands at his sides. Sam sits opposite him on a leather sofa, a table between them. Sam has been choosing his words carefully from the start, but now he thinks the excess information may not be necessary.
"You want me to stop?" Sam asks, anxious, though he has been carefully selecting his words.
The therapist replies a little late, as if he were deep in thought, lost in his imagination: "No, no—carry on."
"This was all. I don't know what else to say," Sam says.
"What do you think the reason for it all is?" the therapist asks as soon as Sam stops. "Is the work not enjoyable?"
"I like the work. The environment as well. That's what takes me far ahead. Even though I feel tense regarding timelines, and I often overthink, second-guessing whether I should ask or just get it over with."
The therapist moves his hands forward to retrieve his notes. "This is normal. You overthink quite a lot. Most people do. The tricky part is when you hear one of them thinking. And tell me, who is that?"
Sam shrugs, his head tilting sideways.
"I guess you are right."
"What do you think the dream means?" the therapist asks while looking straight into Sam's eyes.
Sam moves his eyes in a direction other than the therapist's. It happens when the one person who knows the most, in your mind it feels as though you're looking in a mirror, but a display that portrays all the heinous and awful things about oneself.
"I don't know, but I get it sometimes. On a better thought, it's odd, but nothing has to do with how I go about the day."
The therapist carefully narrates what it could be: "Could be the need to see yourself. The burning man is you. In your dream, you are the reality so you can see from above."
"Why would I think of myself as burning?" Sam's voice changes from previous tones, faster-paced now, charged.
The therapist, knowing the lines, doesn't tread further.
"Dreams can be just random," he says, moving the notepad to the side. "You know, I like my job is to tell you the reasons that comfort you if you need them. But to be honest, if you want to keep this job unlike your last, you have take everything headon."
"Okay, okay. I'll try." Sam replies instantly, breathing fresh air.
"I know, everyone has to go through this, I have to as well."
"Yes, that's what I like to hear," the therapist replies.
But this is what they don't tell you when you stumble into the real: the burning never stops, it just becomes the cost of breathing. They call it stability, this cage of paychecks and responsibilities that lock around your throat like a lover's hands. The money comes, yes, it comes, but so do the threads but not the meta's kind: the job that owns your time, the people who own your secrets, the system that owns what's left. You become the burning man, aflame not with ambition but with the terrible weight of it all. And the worst part? You learn to smile through the flames because the alternative is falling, and there's no one below to catch you. So you move straight, as they say. You keep moving. You become another body on the street, another face forward, another soul too busy to notice it's already burning.
The images are all mine.
The Inkwell Combined Writing Prompt #32 ~ Fiction or Creative Nonfiction
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