For years, I have craved solitude—not out of avoidance, but because I have long understood that being alone is not synonymous with being lonely. When I am by myself, surrounded by nature’s hush, the weight of a good book, and music that hums with gravitas, my mind associates more freely than ever before. Among my classmates’ chaotic vibrancy, I became the quiet observer, musing on how these vibrant youthful bonds might eventually fray like old thread, and pondering whether they could withstand the slow erosion of the world’s complexities. I often felt adrift in the pressure to socialize, until older adults—speaking from the introspection of hindsight—told me that one’s ultimate pursuit is to nurture their own happiness. Everything else—romantic ties, friendships, ambitious alliances—is a mere means, not the end. We are ultimately powerless to alter others, they said; the only reliable compass lies within.
These reflections often seem to seep into my dreams, which carry me to wild, distant landscapes—mist-shrouded mountains, coastlines where the sea gnaws at jagged rocks, towns with many abandoned parking lots and old hotels. In these dreams, I am never truly alone at first: my family is there, and a handful of people who feel like close friends, though in waking life we barely speak. We take refuge in some grand villa with walls thick as a fortress, or we pitch tents to construct a safe, vigilant camp, united by a vague mission to unravel some unresolved mystery lingering in the air.
We climb abandoned elevator shafts; we patrol the parking lot at dusk, our steps light, as if afraid to disturb the silence; we wander the city streets at midnight, when storefronts are shuttered, and the world sheds its daytime mask. Now I realize that in those dreams, I was not chasing clues—I was drawn to discovering what I came to think of as “inversions”: the hidden faces of the ordinary world that only reveal themselves when the noise of daily life fades, like an old apartment building whose top actually has a hidden last floor with mysterious purpose. These inversions were not always pleasant.
Then, slowly, the dream would shift. One by one, the figures beside me would vanish. The air would grow heavier till it is tinged with the uncanny. I would patrol the empty parking lot, urged to run, to hide, from something unseen. The fear was vague, shapeless; I never knew what I fled, only that I had fled a mysterious sound in the corner. When the dread peaked, when I braced for the monster or villain I was sure awaited, I would turn—and see not a foe, but the faces of those who’d vanished, their expressions amicable, yet I was not sure if they were enemies who had taken the form.
But the reprieve never lasted. We would together be chased by a new, unseen presence. The cycle would continue: fear, fleeting reunion, then fear something else again together. I would jolt awake, my heart racing, the dream’s chill clinging to me like mist.