A Sleeping Bag Full of Dreams

Caridad

HAVANA TIMES — If I had to store all my dreams in one place, I don’t think a sack would hold half of them.

I’m not referring to what we usually do when we want to escape from the present: daydreaming. I’m talking about the dreams we have at night, those that are uncontrollable for most people (personally, I always try to avoid sleeping during the day).

Everyone likes to tell their dreams. It’s as if by doing so, those of us who listen to them are supposed to be able to explain those tangles of images that sneak up on them while among sheets and pillows.

The last time I was in Venezuela, there was a period in which I yearned so much to return to Cuba that I spent whole nights dreaming about my family, my friends and even our pets.

I made these nocturnal visits to every street in Havana or to lonely intersections out in rural areas. There were even days when — when I didn’t have any work to do — I wound up to preferring to sleep in so as to remain in Cuba for an hour or so extra.

Now something strange is happening to me.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in love or, on top of that, because of what I went through to get out of there, which was pure hell. Nonetheless, I still dream about my dogs, my friends and my family. Plus, there’s a moment in my dreams when I begin to ask myself how I’ll be able to get back to Venezuela.

I recently met a Venezuelan who argued a little with my partner about politics, because talking about Cuba always leads to people pricking themselves on the thorns of its damned politics.

My partner felt sorry for a mutual male friend who was in love with a Cuban female doctor and tried to initiate the process for getting married. The physician recently finished her “mission” here, but they would have to get married in Cuba.

The Venezuelan took it as an offense when my partner expressed her compassion for what “they were hoping for,” because everyone who knows how many hurdles and difficulties they’ll have to overcome (not to mention the money) to be together again.

The person countered: “If every Cuban were allowed to leave freely, then the island would be left empty. Building a revolutionary system wouldn’t be possible, and nothing would remain of the dignity that the island has always represented” – which silenced my Venezuelan partner.

I didn’t think it was possible to find someone with such a point of view, but life is just as full of surprises as it is dreams.

I could have told her about my anxious dreams, my fear of not being able to return to be with my partner.

But I know it would be futile, because in the dream of those here (in Venezuela) who support the “dignified resistance of the Cuban people,” they don’t include such trivialities as love or the right to decide where to lay one’s head and dream.