It was around 4:15 AM on Wednesday, November 9^th. I felt something creep into my dreams, that had interjected my sleep. I was awake. I laid there for a moment, to recollect my thoughts and what had just happened. I have sleep paralysis often, but this nightmare was different, it was static: I remained gridlocked into a realm of unfamiliarity. I recollected the dream, noticing that everything seemed vivid, every setting I was in was a place I visited often in real life. I was walking inside my local grocery store, then I was at my university. I would see areas of Austin; often parts I would usually venture when I took my morning jogs. The only difference was that a dark shadow followed behind me. I would flip through countless familiar settings, the mysterious shadow gaining speed, drawing closer behind me. At one point the figure was right behind me, so close, almost touching me when my mind interjected, demanding my body wake up. I was awakening with chills running down my spine, my mind frantically telling my body to act, to switch on. I laid in silence for long enough, enrapt, immobile.

Now, I was awakening, falling into a grounded state of reality.

What was this reality I had awaken too?

Is this still the surreal dream I was trapped in?

No, it wasn’t.

The feeling creeped into my swift sleep, a basis from reality.

An old flame was ignited.

It was around 4:15 AM on Wednesday, November 9^th. I was awakening from a petrifying dream.

My picked up my arm to reach for my phone alarmed and knew what it meant.

I peered at my phone and saw the havoc created by the current events happening in my country. Distraught, confused, I saw what I chose not to believe was true. I was naïve, believing that all the bad in America had vanished hundreds of years ago.

The past is the past; I would always tell myself. We do not live in a dark era anymore, of segregation, discrimination, and separate spheres. Or so I thought.

We are all visible now, every single one.

Those groups silenced before by the negative stigma, have become visible now.

We have done it now, opened the floodgates of hell.

We are all damned.

What environment full of hate, full of separation and of fear. What has happened here? Why are we going back…? We are living once again in history.

Our president, our leader who is supposed to be the prime example for America and its morals, has caused an uproar, a fight. Not by his practices, yet, but by the power of his words. The ideas behind one man hit home to the invisible, the quiet; those motivated by hate.

Maybe he will be a good leader, or maybe he will create a better economy. But the fact is, his ideologies, his mentality, and the morals he lives on, have already impacted thousands, initiated an old flame of discrimination and violence.

We have become the America first discovered, exposed and unfamiliar, what seems to be a free-for-all for any leader to take over.

I woke up from a nightmare to only discover that we are now living in one, the American Dream lost in the abyss.

----

The American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.