I'm floating in a cloud of grey. Nothing's certain, nothing has real substance. A picture of a laughing child passes before my eyes but it seems normal and I think nothing of it.

The cloud materializes and I'm standing in the hallway of a school. Not necessarily mine but more of an amalgam of all the school's I've ever seen and read about. And I know it like the back of my hand.

Even through the fog of uncertainty that clouds me in my sleep I know, I can tell that in this scene I am sad, unhappy, but I don't want to show it, and I wander the halls passing by the faces of people I don't know and probably never will.

I come around a corner and see her walking with friends, happy, laughing.

I turn around and walk quickly away in the other direction, my whole body tense.

Fuck her.

I walk through the halls more past more unknown faces, the same ones that I'm always walking by, and look as if I know where I'm going when I really don't.

I round more corners and then get swept up in a crowd into what I think is supposed to be the gym, but it's not.

This isn't right, I know it's not, things aren't supposed to be like this...

The ceiling is glass and it frames a perfectly dreary grey sky and the snow that falls lightly down, and what in god's name? Around the gym that has become ten times bigger than it should be are roller coasters, water slides, thrills rides, things that shouldn't be here.

But people are riding them and like a giddy child I turn around and run to find my friends.

I find them talking to each other and pull them from their continual wrestling match and tell them the news without words and they just look at me in disbelief and I grab them by their collars and bring them, I show them.

One of my friends is swept off his feet quite literally by the nicest and most beautiful girl I've ever seen and I'm happy for him - it was quite unexpected, and drag my other friend to a strange slide that is grey and weaves back and forth with a walkway leading to the top.

Water runs through it and it looks like an absolute blast, though, I can't tell where it ends.

We start making our way up the walkway even though nobody else is and I'm suddenly aware that she's there behind me, just her, and I don't know why. I can't figure it out.

Instead of asking though I pretend that I'm happy and laugh and joke with my buddy even though my face is contorted in an expression of terrible pain, and for some reason I can feel that she's happy too and I'm angry for it.

Screw her.

And then my vision blackens and then focuses on a man on a pedestal in the middle of the throngs of faceless people and he sees me and sees inside me and laughs and tells me quite simply that if I don't tell him one of my flaws, if I don't come to terms with one, I have to leave.

I look at him and tell him that "When I talk to people I often can't look them in the eye because I'm ashamed. I hate asking people for help and I never look at them but rather at the floor because it makes me feel stupid."

The man, he laughs and tells me that I can go on.

I do now, with heavy steps. My friend hasn't noticed. Neither has she, I don't think, and she seems happier than ever. I know that she hates me - she broke me.

And then as we go around a u-turn in the walkway she grabs me by the shoulder and god, her face, I'll never forget it. She was so happy, so joyful, and not just with her mouth or her cheeks but with her eyes and she said to me... Do you know what she said to me? She laughed and said, "Will you marry me?"

I didn't know what to say. I was speechless. I was terrified. I was confused. I didn't want to look eager.

I told her that I would need to think about it, but, yes, I would love to live my life with you and I saw her face and it was so beautiful in its happiness and then...

Then the worst thing happened.

I woke up.

It was cold. My alarm was beeping at me, ruining the sacred silence.

I cried then and there to have such happiness taken from me.

Even in the shower I cried, inside my head at school I cried, and I kept remembering how happy her face was...

Smiling with her eyes.