I’ve been having bad dreams since I was a child. Blood, rats. Monsters behind the shower curtain. The works. Sometimes I go to work and lose all my teeth. Other times, I’m in school again, except my teacher is my boss is my mother and I’ve forgotten my homework. Typical stuff.

But recently, I’ve just been dreaming of blank pages.

I’m in a world of light that I know somehow is my computer screen and I have to write myself into existence or I’ll have never been real in the first place. I have an empty comp book, college ruled, open in front of me but no pencil, and I can’t stand up to grab one. There are three sheets of computer paper lying on the floor beneath Dad’s desk, but I’ve forgotten how to hold a crayon. Even when I don’t dream of paper, it’s still there. The teacher/mom/boss hands out the test but mine is blank. The monster under the bed has white, white eyes. The ghosts are wearing paper sheets with eyeholes cut out. I’m at work and I’ve lost all my teeth, but I know I just need to draw them back on, if I can only remember how to hold a crayon.

I think my life is infecting my dreams.

I went back to work yesterday—we’d had some time off; the snow was terrible—and I spent the usual morning half hour in the break room.

“Some weather, huh,” said a coworker I probably knew.

“Yup,” I responded.

We stayed in silence, sipping coffee until we mustered the energy to retreat to our cubicles and sit all day. She went first, and I stayed until my coffee got cold, trying not to think as if I had more to live for than this.

Then I went to my cubicle, and I worked.

My work is nothing special. It’s the most mind-numbing work for the least manageable pay you can get for an Associate’s degree from nowhere special. The kind of job that the main character has in a Neil Gaiman book before he’s swept away into something greater.

When I was 11, after a particularly bad dream, I’d wait for a letter from Hogwarts. When I was 12, I’d look out for monsters and wonder when I’d go to Camp Half-Blood. Now, I just lay awake and think of empty pages.

I went home late yesterday, stepping over my typo “Home Sweat Home” rug I’d thought was funny in college and depressingly ironic now, and heated up a can of off-brand soup. After a bowl, a beer, and a lackluster episode of some 80s family sitcom, I opened up my laptop to write.

In high school, I’d win awards for my writing. Essays, poems, narratives, you name it, I could write it. I was supposed to go to college, get my BA in English and become something, but life got in the way. Classes got too hard, I got too stressed, and words stopped coming easy. I decided to get a quick degree and join the workforce instead. I still think I like to write, but I really haven’t written since. Last night, like all the nights before it, I sat down and opened Word and tried to write and couldn’t. I just stared, letting pure white burn imprints into my eyes. I’ve read about writer’s block, but it didn’t feel like something was in the way of my Grand Creative Power. It just felt like I was empty. I stared until I felt tears prick at my eyes, and I slammed the laptop shut and went to bed.

Last night, I dreamed of empty paper.

I was standing on the set of the trashy 80s sitcom, staring at the blank-faced actors and the blank script in my hands.

“How was your day at work, honey?” the Perky Mother said happily.

The Tired Husband smiled, then turned to stare at me with empty eyes. “Line?” he said, apologetically.

I looked down at the empty paper. “There’s nothing here,” I said quietly.

The Tired Husband still stared. “Well, you’re the writer, aren’t you? Just remember what you wrote.”

“I didn’t write anything.”

“Sure you did,” said the Precocious Little Girl. “You wrote lots.”

“That was before,” scowled the Emo Older Daughter. “Before the world drained you.” A tinny laugh track played.

“You write emails every day. What’s different?” chirped the Annoying Brother from over his cereal.

I stuttered. “Lots is different. Stories are grand, big, beautiful things. A dream of what the world could be. Emails are…emails.” Another laugh track.

The Annoying Brother shrugged. “Whatever dumb book we’re reading in school isn’t so grand. But it sure is big.” Laugh track.

The Perky Mother smiled altogether too cheerily. “What about us? Are we big? Grand? Beautiful? Is any real person those things?”

“You’re not real.” Laugh track.

“Sure we are,” said the Tired Husband. “You’re talking to us. Are we real?”

“You’re a dream.” Laugh track.

The Emo Older Daughter scoffed dramatically. “If this is what the world ‘could’ be, I’d rather see the real one.” Like clockwork, the laugh track.

“Are you getting this down?” asked the Perky Mother.

I glanced down at the empty scripts in my arms, only to see something I’d written before. A homework assignment, freshman year. To write an alternate ending to Romeo and Juliet. I’d hated that assignment. I’d thought it’d cheapened the tragedy to change it.

“Does your life lose meaning if not a tragedy?” asked the Little Girl sweetly.

“Does it cheapen the experience to be happy?” asked the Brother.

“Do you feel grand, big, beautiful?” asked the Daughter.

“How was your day at work?” asked the Mother.

“Write the next line,” said the Husband.

Words swam across the papers in my hand, forming hypnotic circles.

With a shot, I woke up.

This morning, I drafted my two-week’s notice. Then, I opened a new document and began to write.

“I’ve been having bad dreams since I was a child…”