I feel as though I am waking up from a long, long sleep. While I am still groggy as I write, I am slowly collecting my thoughts and remembering this dream I have been having.

I dreamed of an office; I was working in it for a few hours each day checking my e-mails, fielding phone calls, and browsing the internet looking at pictures or my media profiles. After my time was completed, I would walk to a small cafeteria in my residence building to purchase either a hamburger and french fries with a far-too-sweet tea; occasionally it would be a salad laden with toppings and dressing, with a small styrofoam container of the soup of the day. I would then take my meal back to my small, dusty, cluttered apartment to turn on my X Box and television, and I would then spend the next several hours watching YouTube videos of video game commentaries, or shows on Netflix. I would occasionally play some sort of video game, but not often. Very often I would drink something alcoholic, and in overly generous quantities, until I became ill enough to throw up or drunk enough to pass out. Either result would leave me in bed, curling up until my alarm sounded. It seemed like I never really woke up; I kept having the same dream each day.

This routine would be interrupted by different things; meetings with my coworkers, class assignment or readings that I would only sporadically do, meetings with the students I was supervising, and policy violation calls that would come in during certain evenings often until the early hours of the morning. Occasionally other people would take prominence in the dream for a few moments; sometimes my coworkers and co-grads, sometimes the students I supervised. We would talk about different things; different tasks at our offices, occasional small talk, rarely something else. These moments were uncomfortable, as it felt like we were each intruding on each other’s private sanctums. They soon passed, and the routine returned to consign all discomfort and awkwardness to a forgetful haze.

I remember feeling like I was trapped in this dream, but also that such a detail was unimportant. It was enough to just keep dreaming; there may have been a waking world, to be sure, but the dream was more important.

I remember thinking this as I woke up today. While the people in my dreams have largely left me, they were certainly real. My apartment is still cluttered and dusty, but not as much as it was. Classes have long since let out, and the small cafeteria has been closed for months. It occurred to me then that I had not actually been dreaming for this past year; it had only felt like it because each day had blended into the next with so little variation that I assumed I could only be dreaming, as who would choose to live a life so dull and uncomfortable?

My mirror’s reflection gave me the same expectant look as I waited for an answer.