Wake Up

This morning I woke up crying.

Just prior to waking I had embarked on a dream that took me through starkley painted rooms of bluish grey with hazy air and uncertain location. It was as if I was in a movie watching myself on a vinyl white screen. In the only two scenes I remember there were four people--two I knew, two I did not.
In scene one I was sitting on the floor, legs extended outward from the hip like a dancer stretching before a show. In the space between my legs two infants were laying on their backs cooing up at me and smiling and laughing. They appeared to be twins. On a nearby couch sat my mother, bright-eyed and smiling.
Then the scene changed and I was suddenly watching another blue-grey room from birde eye view, but this time I wasn't in the picture. Below me were two incubators. I could see the two babies in their respective sleeping places, they were sick and ashen. Suddenly the lights in the room got lower and I could no longer see the children but rather two large bluish-grey sheets billowing over each child. From my viewpoint I could only see the rising and falling of their little chests underneath the sheets. Up down. Up down. Up down. Up down. Up----and then one stopped and only one sheet continued to rise and fall.
There was a flash of light and I was back in my bed, awake and confused. I sat up immediately. My chest was heaving and tears were forging streams down my cheeks.
I was shaken moreso than I have been by a dream in a very long time. I can't get the image of those two little chests moving up and down out of my head. My co-worker Emily says, in her very best psych 101 thought process, that maybe the babies represent my two career paths and the death of one as I decide what is next for me. Will I continue in journalism or try life working in live theatre?
I don't know, I can appreciate her idea because it doesn't sound so scary, but I still can't stop thinking about those babies. Will I have to watch one die in order to put all my love and affection toward another?