My skies and stars are your vacation threshold

If the title sounds absurd, the reason is that it is. I heard these words in a dream a couple of days back. Ever since I can recall, either I have had no dreams or very intense ones. The ones that seem so real that the first emotion I feel upon waking up is either a profound sense of loss or relief. Fortunately or unfortunately, I forget what the dream was about within less than a second since the rise of that emotion. But this one was different. I still remember a ton of details, more than I ever have.

The dream began with me and my brother sitting outside a stall waiting for breakfast. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), a rising indie musician was sitting beside us whom I have come to really admire over the years, named Frizzell D'souza, along with one of her band members. I can’t put my finger upon why she was there but it might have had something to do with the long message I wrote to send her at New Year’s eve. A message she never got.

I quit meat in May 2024, after my second Vipassana course in Dhamma Sikkim. I was struggling a lot before the course. My mom was so worried by looking at my face during our last call before I handed over my phone for the next 10 days of the course that she decided to do a grand havan praying for my well-being while I was gone. I knew going in that those 10 days were going to be hell. But I also knew that I had to go through that hell. And it didn’t disappoint. This post is not about my experience there. So, I will keep this short. I went there to heal myself. I know I came out a ton lighter. During the course, we are served only pure vegetarian food as one of the precepts that a Vipassana meditator lives by states that we shall not harm any living beings. This also means we don’t incentivise others to do so. Given the impact it has had on me since I started practicing it in 2023 and my experience during those 10 days, I found the sacrifice (I used to call myself “pure non-vegetarian” until that point) worth it if it deepens my practice.

Back to the dream. My brother still enjoys his chicken. He ordered a chicken dish (I cannot recall which one). I knew that Frizzell loves meat and one way to get her attention (why did I want to? I wish I could give logical answers for all my actions) was to let out my suppressed love for meat (you have to see it to believe it). And so, I did. And she laughed. Mission successful. This scene went on repeat a few more times. She laughed every time.

There was this one guy who had the kind of physique I consider my dream physique. A chain of events later, my brother and I are now in his room. I think we went there to drop him off at first. As we were talking, I felt something was off and I asked him if he was okay. All of a sudden, he started crying. Both of us sat next to him and asked him what happened. Although the exact words are lost on me now, the only other set of words I remember hearing were “mom and dad”. The first set of words he said make up the title of this post. He somehow felt that I could understand what he was going through but my brother would not. This made my brother flare up and he asked him why he felt so. He started listing down specific scenarios to show my brother how he would not relate to them:

“Do you stay up late at night wondering why are you alive?”

“Do you feel a massive hole inside your heart that nothing seems to fill, no matter how much you try?”

“Do you end up not being able to express what you feel in front of people even though you have so much to say?”

My brother responded: “Yes”, “Yes”, “Yes”

My focus instantly shifted towards him. The dream ended.

Ever since I woke up, I have been trying to make sense of it (a futile attempt, you might say). Why did the dream end this way? Why did those particular words feel so… familiar? Why do I remember this dream?