What's the Dream?

Remember back when you were a kid and even the most outlandish of dreams for yourself seemed LEGIT possible? Back when credit cards were magic pieces of plastic that meant you could take home anything your eyes landed on. At a time when you could eat all the gummy bears and fun dip you wanted because those current little teeth of yours were gonna fall out anyway. Those days when “you’re runnin up my light bill,” and “close the door, you’re lettin all my good air out,” were just non-sensical things your momma said when she was in one of those moods.

It was a simpler time. You could chalk everything your parents said about growing up to them being dramatic or playing make-believe.

Our dreams used to be untouchable. There were no real-world situations that could make us give them up or doubt their possibility. Even if THEE dream didn’t come true, there was almost instantly another one ready to take its place.

Adulthood is a rude awakening when it comes to bills, taking care of your living space, managing your mental health, and navigating interpersonal relationships.

Having to maintain your survival through it all can leave you with very little time to maintain those dreams that once filled your little head. Life has a way of slapping you in the face and making you feel silly about having hope for anything beyond getting through your current day-to-day life. I think that’s sad. Letting go of your dreams makes it even harder to wade through what becomes of our lives the older we get.

When I was in the 6th grade I declared I was going to be a talk show host one day. This was one of many childhood dreams but the main one that fueled everything I did and that all the adults around gassed me up about. When I say everyone gassed me up about it, I mean EVERYONE. It didn’t feel like when adults just entertained the silly dreams of little kids. I felt like everyone truly believed it was a dream I could one day accomplish. I had the personality, the tenacity, and I was just annoying enough to not let anything stop me.

The first seed of doubt was planted by a psychology teacher I had my first year in college. During an office hours session, he asked what I saw for my future, and I told him. By that point, I had BEEN demanded that the streets address me as Kadazia Perry the Sparkle Princess Future Talk Show Host Extraordinaire or to not address me at all. That professor chuckled and told me that I wasn’t going to be a talk show host one day.

At this point in my very young adulthood, I had been going through life with undiagnosed depression and anxiety at least since my middle school years. That first year in college was tough. I wasn’t surrounded by friends and found it hard to make friends for the first time in my life. Racial bias was less than subtle at the school I was attending, no more than one or two other students in my classes looked like me. I felt even more confronted with the realization that most people consider me ugly. I had kinda turned my back on art in favor of pursuing a psychology degree for my future talk show. And my professor just told me that the dream I’d been holding onto and nurturing for practically my entire existence at that point was a waste of time.

From then on it was easy for me to come up with my own doubts about this silly dream and what I was capable of. My cystic fibrosis was cystic fibrosis-ing and I couldn’t go a sentence or two without coughing. Who wants to listen to that? I wasn’t just Black I was ugly and Black, who wants to look at that? My thoughts were the darkest they’d ever been, who wants to hear about that?

I’ll be honest, those doubts and questions still plague me as I’m typing right now. To a much lesser extent (shout out to my therapist, Zoloft, and Mirtazapine), but they’re still there.

I doubt my likeability, my mental stability, and my physical abilities almost every single day.

But within the past few years, I started dreaming again. Those old and new dreams are sitting on the same couch as my doubts but they are almost always present and accounted for these days.

Life will convince us that dreams are child’s play at our big ages and maybe they are.

I think it’s okay to still dream anyway. I think it’s even more okay if those dreams don’t come to fruition.

More than a dream coming true, I think it’s important to always have something to be working toward and to aspire to because a lot of times the right now really sucks. A dream can be the thing to keep us pushing forward and through whatever we’re currently facing.

It’s hard out here for real. Maybe in the future, it doesn’t have to be. That’s the dream, anyway.