In my dreams I can walk.

It’s funny because I’m aware that it’s a surprising fact, while I’m dreaming, meaning to say that it’s not like I’m dreaming of my life before MS, I’m clearly dreaming of my current life with MS but somehow, I can walk and it’s the best feeling ever.

I’ll be in any number of situations, like last night, for example, I was in a store front/office/hair salon – in this particular dream the building was all three at the same time. The office contained an advertising agency where some people I used to work with were working still – specifically a particular ex-boyfriend and his wife along with some old friends from a long-ago time in my life where I was still with this particular guy but probably shouldn’t have been. In real life, those friends became friendly with this particular ex-boyfriend after he left me for his current wife and subsequently went through some kind of strange and unforeseen metamorphosis into a spiritual, soulful, nature-loving yogi so they all felt the old him and the new-and-improved him weren’t the same person anymore so they couldn’t justify judging him by old-him standards. Yeh, you can imagine how well that went over with me then (and now, if I’m honest, because as this particular ex-boyfriend once told me, when one is a snake, one is always a snake and that’s just the way it is). I didn’t believe him then when he told me that annoying story about the snake always being true to its fundamental nature and even in my dream, I still didn’t believe him. I guess if I’m honest that carries over to real life too! But that’s another story.

In my dream, I walk into this storefront in the hipster part of town where the floors are reclaimed wood and old stained glass hangs in some of the windows. The ad agency is on the left side of the building and the hair salon is on the right, separated by a giant exposed brick wall because all decent hipster dwellings should have an exposed brick wall, shouldn’t they? I don’t realize at first that this hair salon is connected to this advertising agency where people I don’t really want to see happen to work but when it hits me, I have a moment of panic. These people have yet to see me with any of my various mobility aids. These are the last people I want seeing this new version of me, I can distinctly remember thinking in my dream brain, so I decide to walk through the door without the help of Clara or Nitro, my two rollators that I know are in the trunk of my car. I’ll just hold on to stuff – walls and furniture and things, people if I have to, there’s usually something I can cling to. Nobody will notice. I’ll just pretend I don’t see them. They will ignore me because I will make them feel uncomfortable. It will be fine.

This isn’t my regular, go-to-in-real-life hair salon and even in my dream I remember being confused about why I found myself in this strange salon. I knew it was close to closing time. I needed my roots done and my hair cut and there was no way there would be time to do both and it vaguely occurs to me that I shouldn’t be doing either of those things in this unknown hair salon/ad agency hybrid business because I have high maintenance hair and I am even loyal to my hair stylist in my dreams but I remember thinking that I was there now and turning around and walking out would probably draw more attention to my presence there than just staying and doing the damn deed. So I decide to stay.

There is a girl at the front desk who explains I have to wait a few minutes for the right stylist but I can sit over on the other side, in one of the cubicles, to wait. The other side. Where those people are that I really don’t want to see me wall surfing but when I turn around to walk, my legs move just fine. Huh. That’s weird. But I’ll take it. I walk over to the other side and sit down, staring down at my phone so as to avoid making eye contact with him or her (or any of them really) but it’s too late. He’s noticed me. He immediately slides into the other side of the red vinyl booth that I’m sitting in – it’s a booth now and not a cubicle but I can’t remember when that change happened. He gives me a sheepish smile, a hint of the old twinkle that I remember him having in his eye when he looked at me in the past – back when he was still married to wife #1 and had his sights set on me without me really realizing it right away but I remember that look instantly in my dream and I tell myself silently to ignore it. He’s not that person anymore, remember, and neither am I and also, I have a disease now even if I can suddenly seem to walk really well without any aid but I somehow also simultaneously know that this miracle won’t last any longer than it takes me to get out of this weird building and back to my car.

My dream brain is amazingly vivid. I see he’s kind of bald now – the hair on the top of his head is wispy and thin not thick and black like it used to be, the stubble on his face is salt and pepper but it’s not completely unappealing to me and I instantly tell myself to stop this line of thinking and get the hell out of there but I can’t. I remember that I’m about to get my hair done and I really need a haircut really badly. Incidentally, I also really need a hair cut in real life. That high-dose biotin Dr. Cleveland Clinic put me on has my nails and hair growing like mad. My pompadour in my dream (and in real life) are both rather outrageously large. Like a giant platinum mushroom cloud with dark roots.

Dream Me, who can suddenly walk, stays put in the booth while ex-boyfriend asks me all sorts of questions about how I’ve been etc. etc. and I lie and tell him how GREAT I am which is when I notice the current wife noticing me in my booth and looking none too happy. I casually mention it to him hoping he will leave me because I suddenly have to pee really badly and I’m not sure if my miraculous walking ability will be with me or not when I try to slide out of this booth and walk the very long distance to the back of this weird building full of people I very much don’t want to see and where the bathrooms are located so very far away. I twist around to look and there is nothing to hold on to between my booth and that bathroom and I start to panic a little.

Dream ex-boyfriend gets up and walks back to current wife in her own booth a few feet away who appears to be acting out some scene from a play with a troop of other audaciously dressed actors who are all dressed in stylized Shakespearian get ups. Current wife is playing some kind of witch, her costume is made of black filmy layers that flow as she waves her arms around to warn the hero of some long-ago foretold tragedy. Her hair is very long and in dirty blonde dread locks. I see him walk over to her and kiss her on the head, holding the top of her dread-covered head with both hands as if to reassure her that she has nothing to worry about from the likes of me (which she doesn’t, obviously, because Dream Me is shockingly not into this situation at all).

I decide it’s time to make my escape to the bathroom.

As I slide out of the red vinyl booth that suddenly looks like the booths in a local bar where I used to hang out with another boy I shouldn’t have been hanging out with at the time, my left foot hits the black and white square-tiled floor and I notice I’m suddenly wearing very high heeled black Manolo Blahnik pumps. This is a very bad turn of events but I really have to pee so I put tentative weight on that sleek heel and begin to stand up and lo! I don’t fall over. Ok. Huh. This miraculous walking ability I seem to have in my dream is holding up, I think to myself. I don’t teeter. I walk quickly to the back of this suddenly giant hair salon/ad agency building and get myself to the bathroom.

I’m not in there five minutes when the front desk girl from the hair salon opens the door to find me. It’s finally my turn. It’s 10pm. It hits me that the ad agency is celebrating some kind of event and that’s why their space suddenly turned into a retro-bar scene so the people I don’t really want to see will be hanging around a bit longer. In my mind it hits me with 100% clarity that there is a time limit on my magic legs that can walk in those amazing shoes. I have to get out of there by 11PM or I will be crawling out of that building and what of my protestations of how GREAT I’m doing then? I will be outed as the disabled fraud that I am. I may break actual bones if I fall in these shoes.

I explain to the hair salon people that we’re just going to have to skip the color part of this deal and head straight to the hair cut part of the program but the team of four doesn’t like this idea at all (yes four, I have no idea why four people have stayed late to take care of my hair needs) and I suddenly feel pressure to let them do what they want with me since they all stayed so late and all. Dream Me is very accommodating.

“Can we cut my hair dry? I’m kind of in a hurry,” I say, as girl number 1 pushes me into a black reclining chair in front of a sink and douses my hair with water. “Sorry, no Hun, we need to give you a glaze to tone down that yellow. It won’t take a minute,” she says but Dream Me knows how long a glaze to tone down that yellow will take but I’m stuck in the sink with a wet head by now, completely at the mercy of this troop of really intensely dedicated hair stylists. I open my eyes when I feel someone touch my arm and it’s ex-boyfriend telling me to come back to the party after my hair is done. We’ll all have so much fun! (OR NOT, Dream Me thinks, very clearly intending to bolt the minute my head is dry again).

The girls are doing their thing, my hair is flying around my head, landing on the black and white tile floor, sticking to the exposed brick wall like little white feathers. I feel sick with worry. My wonky legs are coming back, I can just feel it. I’m not going to be able to escape. I glance toward the front of the building and there is suddenly snow falling like little puffs of cotton coming from the sky and I wonder how the hell I’m going to make it to my car in these crazy shoes. The party is heating up on the other side of the building and my head starts to spin. I feel a touch on my arm again. He’s standing there with Clara, my fancy Danish rollator, and a pair of Uggs. Yes. He’s actually holding a pair of black Ugg Classic short boots in one hand and Clara in the other.

“This thing is amazingly light,” he says. And in real life, Clara does indeed weigh less than eleven pounds and so apparently it is in my ridiculously detailed dream. “I knew all along. I’ll help you out to your car. I got you.”

And I wake up in my bed. My hips are throbbing with pain and my eyes water. I feel a muscle spasm creeping into my stone-feeling right foot. I try to move, very slowly as I’ve taught myself to do so as not to set off the spasm into its full glory. I’m praying one or the other of my giant cats doesn’t jump on my bladder because I really have to pee but I also really have to jot down the notes about this crazy dream before I lose them. I’ve had some version of this dream at least five – maybe six times in the last six months. The setting is always different the cast of characters are similar but not always the same. That particular ex-boyfriend and his current wife seem to always weasel their way into whatever the scenario is, much to my chagrin. I clearly need an exorcist for my subconscious.

Aside from the wonderful feeling of being able to walk, I’d very much like to stop having this dream. These are not good dreams. They’re not necessarily bad dreams either but when I stand up to finally wall-walk to the bathroom, it nearly breaks me to remember so vividly what it felt like to stand up and just walk like that. Without thinking about it. Without wobbling or falling over or using a mobility aid.

I don’t miss the ex-boyfriend (or his current wife). But I really miss being able to effortlessly walk from place to place. I miss that part of the dream so very much.