My wife, Lisa, and I recently moved from a wilderness setting to the suburbs, from a highly structured environment to a more spontaneous way of life. We now live in a tiny house, which, at 200 square feet, isn’t tiny to us at all since it’s larger than the cabin we lived in for the previous five years. The one peculiarity that has been a challenging adjustment, though, is the low-hanging single-slope ceiling above the loft where we sleep. The ceiling is so low, in fact, that we have to crawl to get up into the loft. And if I am not careful when I get out of bed, I can easily hit my head against the paneling that hovers a mere arm’s length above. Ouch! 

Another unsettling effect of this unique sleeping arrangement is how it has insinuated itself into my nighttime processing of this major life transition. One night, for instance, I dreamt that I was in a very pleasant, comfortable place. Upon waking, the remnants of the dream wafting away, I gazed up at the obscure, shadowy mass above me, taking in where I actually was, and felt a pulsing anxiety arise in my belly. I briefly toggled in my imagination between the dream place and my waking reality and confirmed that I felt a spontaneous bodily reaction to my new circumstances, a kind of anxious disorientation, compared to the relative ease and spaciousness I felt in the dream. 

Still in bed later that morning, dozing in and out of light, restless sleep, I had another dream. Lisa and I were in something like an action thriller movie, in which we had to detonate a nuclear device at just the right moment in order to save something, maybe the whole world. We were atop a tall building overlooking a sprawling metropolis and had to run and dive through a low opening in a door to reach the device. In the dream, I briefly considered that this device was so powerful it would surely lay this entire city, and more, to ruins. But never mind, our quest was of the utmost necessity, and the moment of opportunity imminently upon us. Lisa dove in first and I followed after her. Once inside, Lisa called out to me, “Connect the wires NOW!” I hurriedly fumbled with what looked like a voltmeter, my hands shaking, until I finally managed to make contact. Immediately, I felt a faint tingling sensation pass through my body. And that was it. No explosion. No oblivion. In fact, nothing seemed to change at all. I called out to Lisa, but she didn’t respond. I turned toward where she had been and she wasn’t there. She was gone. 

With a flash of anguish, I realized that we had indeed succeeded. We detonated the device, and as a consequence, we were each propelled into alternate timelines, now unbridgeably separated from one another. We had saved the world, or whatever it was that we set out to save, but at an unbearable personal cost. 

Just as I was struck by this devastating realization, however, I abruptly found myself in a house that was not my own, with a woman I did not know. She made a joke about a man in a pickup truck parked outside in the driveway, then placed her hand familiarly on my shoulder. That’s when I understood. In this alternate timeline, this was my house, this stranger my wife. I had suddenly stepped into a life that was mine, yet preceded me by decades, with everything and everyone I knew in the other timeline utterly gone, swept away without a trace. Heartsick, I wondered if I could trust this woman, this stranger, my wife, with the truth of what I had endured. I wondered, in this new, inescapable reality, if there was anyone who could carry my losses with me, carry the rupture I just passed through that no one else could see. I wondered how I could possibly adapt to a life, an identity, roles, and relationships so completely foreign to me. 

Then I woke up.

Gazing at the low-slung ceiling once again, in continuity with the dream, my belly still pulsed those awful, primal questions: Is this real? Am I really me? Do I belong or am I misplaced? Is there anyone who can understand the truth of who I am, of what I lived? My body still pulsing its ingrained, urgent directive for survival, against the dreadful weight of dangerous memory, of helplessness, and the finality of loss: Adapt! Adapt! Adapt!