through the wrong train and fire, i still found my way home.

i've had a lot of dreams recently. not the fanciful sort. the hefty sort ,the sort that tightens around your ribcage and stays with you even when you wake.

i caught the wrong train last night. again.

in my dream, i wanted to go home  but i was on a train in the opposite direction.  always away from where i should be.

this time, something was different.

the station I arrived at  unknown, incorrect, perhaps even hazardous was on fire. not figuratively. literally flames. raging from somewhere I couldn't see. but strangely, I wasn't injured. I was just… paralysed. frightened. primarily of informing my parents where I was. not only that I boarded the wrong train  but that I somehow managed to find myself in the midst of fire and mayhem.

i recall standing on the platform, hesitating whether to call for assistance.

instead, i boarded the train once more. the same train at the burning station. and as i walked across the fire, the train began moving. not away from home. towards it.

and suddenly, the fear dissipated. the flames behind me were extinguished. and the ride became smooth, almost serene.

---

perhaps that is what life is these days.

perhaps i am afraid of taking the wrong turn.

perhaps i am bearing someone else's guilt.

perhaps i am too afraid of messing up, of letting people down who count on me, of not being where i "ought" to be by now.

but the dream didn't end in terror. it ended in action. in fearlessness. in opting to move ahead of fear rather than waiting to be rescued.

and perhaps that's what my subconscious was trying to tell me:

you can be afraid and still go on.

you can get on the wrong train and still end up where you need to.

you can walk through flames and still be in one piece.

i needed to hear that. perhaps you did too.

— k.