Anxiety Dream

Andrew and Lea knock on my door. I am excited to see them; they are my friends. But when I open the door to my apartment, they are each two feet taller than when I last saw them. They act as though nothing has changed, but it has. They are two feet taller. And when they hug me, they are giants. They seem happy to see me, they are cheerful and they act the same as always, but I am thrown. These are not my friends. My friends are not giants; they are normal people. They didn't tell me before they showed up at my door that they had grown. I wasn't prepared for this. And I am sad, not because they are tall, but because something has been fractured. Something has changed so drastically and we must pretend that it hasn't.

But I also resent them for growing when I have stayed tiny and human. Tiny in every way, resentful and bitter that I have not grown. That I am still the same.

And I want them to leave because I don't like the way this feels. I don't want them in my apartment or in my life. I don't want to be reminded of my own failures, my own pettiness, the ways in which I feel stunted.

The day is saturated with the tint of this dream, with the echo of it. I am small, I am small. I am so so small. Small in comparison to others, small in comparison to where I thought I would be, small, even, in comparison to those I love, to those I once loved. I keep shrinking in a world that keeps expanding, and I wake up again and again in a panic that one day I will disappear altogether.