text: Rose always wanted to be a musician. She always found herself fascinated by VMA and MTV awards. She’d spend hours envisioning herself with a shiny and polished grammy award. If Rose can travel to the underworld and fight to the death for this dream, maybe it will be hers in waking life. So Rose takes the bait and travels to the depths of the astral realm. Her thoughts blur and her body trembles as her consciousness rises out of her body like zombies re-surging to the earth. Rose arrives at a beige hall where a set of three light brown, wooden doors glisten. The three doors signify significant years in her music career. 10 years old (5th grade), 17 years old (her sophomore year of highschool), and 19 years old (her sophomore year of college). One door leads her to a memory where puberty breaks her voice in and she utilizes new vocal tools like vibrato for the first time. Another leads to her first time performing live. The final door leads to a time where she stops singing for a plethora of reasons, depression being one of the many. Her main fight is not Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, it is her doubt. There’s a secret that will light up her path beyond one of the doors. If she picks the right door, she will succeed. When Rose lands in the beige hall, her eyes are still adjusting to the room. The room fades into a bright yellow as her eyes settle and she gazes around and all there is is a void. There is green, black, and yellow cursive plastered on the walls in arabic. A fair skinned woman floats into the hall. Her feet are barely off the ground and she’s floating with angel wings for arms. The hall where each door is is locked. A blue screen is glowing on each door. “There is a time where you gave up your dream and that time is behind one of these doors.” A woman with brown long hair, brown tanned skin, and ghostly eyes says. “How do you know this?” Rose asks. “Because I’m one of your angels, your dream didn’t die at one singular point in time. Each time you nurtured them and awakened to your power, you felt fear. You overcame each fear with love but there came a time where the darkness consumed you,” the woman says. “What do you mean?” Rose asks. “Put simply...you worried that your strength could destroy more than it could heal so you avoided your gifts worrying that you would be nothing without your pain.” she says “i don’t understand,” rose says “you won’t understand now, it’s all repressed but you will once you watch all three videos we should get started now.” The screens turn black and begin buffering with white dashes loading in the center. “You will watch ten second clips of these memories. They may seem distant because your body stores memories rather than your consciousness, which is why no spirit remembers when they transfer their souls into a new body. “Are you serious?” Rose asks. "Where do dreams go?” she asks. “Well, they flutter into the abyss. They float in the air like oxygen and attach themselves to new bodies every day. That’s why dreams are so random. We breathe dreams like how we breathe oxygen.” She says. “Now this is very important,” the woman says. “You lost your way in one of these memories, and to acquire your dream once again, you will be required to cultivate enthusiasm, joy, gratitude, and bliss all at the same time. It sounds easy, but you do it more than you think and I’ve seen it often from you.” she says. “I lost my dream?” Rose asks. “Yes, you threw it away because you felt inadequate. But don’t worry, you can get it back,” the woman says, “but now the universe needs to know that you won’t do it again. The truest test of faith is distance. The universe is giving you a second chance. You’ve already done the work, but now walking through the right door will give it back. Rose turns her head when she hears a chime in the distance. “How long do I have?” she asks. “You have an hour in earth time and 10 minutes in astral time. Which clip would you like to watch first? There’s no order you’re required to watch them in. “I want to choose number 19,” Rose says nervously. “Good choice,” the woman says. Before it starts, I ask her name. “I’m Ivy. Poise...but ivy.” she says smiling. My eyes held no hope in the clip. The more I learned, the more sorrow I felt. People believed in me less and less. Algorithms favored me less and less. Beauty faded with age and not substantially, either. I wasn’t old either, just unpolished. Insecure. I was just me. Swallowed by life’s conducive surprises. The blue screen turns black and my body trembles as the memory consumes me. The video is playing back a hopeless recall of the aftereffects of antidepressants. My face was plump and my stomach was round beneath my shirt, pulling the top half of it up to my chest. Without delay, this memory resurfaces. I pulled a notebook out of my bin of journals and rubbed dust off of the nape of my acoustic guitar. I peeked out of my window and the sun was setting smoothly. The guitar’s body was icy against my leg. The metal strings elicited pressure into my fingertips. As I pressed down, the guitar hummed in some random alternate tuning open d I believe. I wrote word upon word, stringing together broken sentences in harmony with c shapes up and down the fret. Scribbles were dancing across the page. After formulating a verse and a chorus, I propped up my phone against my sheets. I stared at my reflection through the phone, looking long and hard, I couldn’t tell who I was anymore, so I shut my phone off. Tears streamed down my face. After watching this clip, I wasn’t sure when I had even left my body. This had to be the death of the dream. The doubt, the insecurity, the fear of judgment, my heart felt heavy and torn. “You okay?” Ivy asks. “Yea, I’m alright. I just never thought I’d make it out of that time, i've come so far.” Rose says. “How so?” Ivy asks. “Well, I started playing guitar just a few years after I learned how to sing. Life shifted gears. My self image got so bad that I couldn’t even create in the way that felt the most fulfilling.” Rose says. “It all just felt surreal and unfair.” “Listen, Rose,” Ivy begins, “Life is going to throw obstacles at you, but it’s up to you what you’ll catch and what you’ll throw back. It’s not your fault what you went through, but it’s up to you to grow from it and plant seeds of hope in your own life. You get me?” she asks. “Yea I guess,” Rose says solemnly. I pick the next clip, the first one, number 10. I immediately glided into the hall of my 3rd grade auditorium. The warm lowlights cast a shadow on my chorus teacher’s face. Ms. Jones. “You remember the lyrics?” she asks softly. “Yes” I say. “Okay, sing the bridge for me” I sing quietly but my vocal chords tremble in a way they never have before. I cover my mouth in shock. “What was that?” I asked fearfully. “Your voice is blossoming,” she says with a wide smile. “That’s good. It’s called vibrato. Just go with it. “Okay,” I say. My bright burgundy choir robe drags against the dusty tiled floor. I walk up the steps, passing all the proud families and staff smiling in the distance. An applause erupts once we’re all prepped on the stage. My stage fright begins in my hands. They tremble ever so slightly and my heartbeat quickens, and the room begins to spin. I take a deep breath and try to relax. I don’t remember anything until my solo. The spotlight traces my face as I step up to the lead microphone and there I am singing the national anthem. I’m welted into the heart of fear, coldness, and bare emotion. The end of this moment is something I remember clearly. I promised myself that I would never humiliate myself in this way ever again. The love must have been real because I did this, over and over again within the span of a 10 year radius. When I get back to the hall, I find Ivy sitting cross-legged on the ground. Her legs are drifting slightly above the ground. I look down at my feet and all I see is a white skirt draped down my body, but I can’t see the legs. “How much longer do I have?” I ask. “you to have 5 more minutes,” she says. “Okay, let’s jump to the last clip, the one in the middle, 17.” I’m hesitant to open the last door. Ivy’s wings glow as she waits “this is it,” I whisper to myself. The door creaks open and there is a nostalgic ambience to the abyss. I walk through the darkness and my feet lead me to a high school talent show that took place during my senior year. My guitar is weightless, strapped across my shoulder. Only a few people make up the audience, and empty chairs are clustered together. A backing track begins and I play along with it. I open my mouth to sing, but I freeze instead and feel claustrophobic. My hands tremble, and eventually, the strumming slows to a stop. Sweat trickles down my forehead. The crowd is silent, confused, and their silence is deafening. I breathe remembering my 5th grade chorus teacher’s words. Whenever you feel scared, imagine you’re the only one on stage. No one else matters. With a deep breath, I clench my guitar and strum, gathering myself. I step closer to the microphone and an applause erupts in the crowd. I gasp the moment I return to the hall with ivy. Everything makes sense. “You didn’t lose your dream” she says “you just forgot that the world isn’t against you” The truth pulls me into its suffocating embrace. Each of these moments is proof of my love for music. Love that lifted me, sustained me, and kept me. The vibrato at 10, the freeze at 17, the depression at 19. Each of these moments molded me and told one story. Each time I gave into fear, the dream slipped away. I gave up because I was afraid of myself. I was afraid to grow, to change, I was afraid of being different. There was never a singular path carved out in front of me. There was no step-by-step plan. “Exactly,” Ivy adds. “Your gift was never lost - it was just waiting for you to come back,” Ivy adds. “How do I make sure I don’t lose it this time?” i ask “By choosing love over fear, always.” She says “if you did it before, you can do it again” ivy smiles a warm smile. “Thankyou” I say. “Not a problem,” she says “The dream is yours, now go get it.” I wake up in my bedroom with sunlights engulfing my entire room. My guitar is right across from my bed with a post it note taped onto it. “Go get it :)” I pick it up and harmonize with the birds chirping in the distance. As I play the strings, they sing effortlessly, for the very first time in years. 5 to be exact. I feel whole. The dream never died. It was just waiting for me to believe in it again.