i had a daughter

friday, january 10th, 2025

once i dreamed i had a daughter.  at that point, i hadn't given kids a lot of though besides that i maybe was going to adopt a baby girl and name her bishop.  bishop is a name my mom told me she loved very long ago, so i shall use it for my daughter.  i didn't know if i was to adopt her at all, or if i did what age she was going to be.  will i adopt her a sibling?  i was very conflicted on one side, but on another, i realized that i am 15 and still a baby myself.  that day before i had dreamed, my mother and i had had a brief talk about her.  it wasn't too deep, just general conversation.  but i guess that conversation lingered into my subconscious instead of going to neverland.  i believe that things that linger in the subconscious trigger your dream for the night; that goes for me at least.

i don't remember much about how the dream started off as most of my dreams are jumbled, out of order, and incoherent; this one was no different.  but unlike most, this dream actually had something consistent in it.  i was pregnant with bishop.  i didn't say it was bishop, but i could feel her; it's the kind of feeling that is unmistakable.  i don't know how far along i was, but my stomach was big.  i had this maternal feeling throughout the entire dream.  which is weird because i never liked kids to the point where i felt maternal.  i had walls painted in a pale yellow with wooden floors and a wooden table with four chairs at its sides.  it was bright.  very sunny.  i guess now is the time to mention this baby was the daughter to my first love.

there was such a gentle masculinity to him.  like the whole dream was covered in this soft glow.  i think he kissed my stomach at one point.  at another we were laying in our bedroom looking up at the ceiling as if stargazing.  he played with my fingers in the air as he used to do to me in the movie theater.  it was picture perfect as out of some cringey 2010s love story movie.  it felt like such a long dream, but in reality it was very short, for that is all the information i can recall.  perhaps there was more that i cannot remember.  when i woke up, i didn't remember my dream immediately.  i just remember laying down, scrolling on my phone when it hit me.  that same maternal feeling that i had in the dream came back to me along with everything that had happened.  it was a sinking, empty feeling.  one i feel right now as i type this.

i began to retrace my dream to try and ease the sudden void from my unborn, not real yet somewhat real child.  i texted a friend through tiktok who empathized with my situation as to where we both agreed that us women needed answers; that there needs to be some sort of in depth research on this common phenomena most women experience some time in their life.  she used the word, "heart wrenching" to describe my dream from her point of view.  and she's right.  it was.  but even more so than heart wrenching, gut wrenching is an adequate word as well.  is there a word that mixes those two together?

she went searching for answers for me and sent some tiktok comments to me.  the comments are gone now, but one of them said, "i believe its our unborn child coming to say hi to us."  i like that theory.  it makes me feel better.  i hope that that's true and God allows us a glimpse into what could be.  or really, for my case, what could've been.  i guess in another life things wouldn't have gone so amiss and we'd live in a house with pale yellow walls, wooden floors and table, looking up at the ceiling while he fidgets with my fingers and hands, waiting for our child.