This new world scared me.

Everything about it was something I'd think to see in my nightmares.

The 'skies' were bright, but had an ominous, unnatural darkness to them as well. Near everywhere I looked there were shaded corners or alleyways, and the air above me was criss-crossed with the darkened undersides of the far-above bridges. There were artificial lights all along the walls, but they never really seemed bright enough to light up the vast empty spaces between the buildings. There was not a glimmer of natural light to be found, no fire, no sun, no moon and no stars. Just buildings, just bridges, just this time that I’m in.

I've always loved the stars. In my world of distrust, they were always something permanent. Something that would always be there, no matter what else happened. Though they were far above me, they were my foundation, the embodiment of the faith I held in the world around me, even if everything went wrong. And really, what better foundation could I have chosen? People can die or learn to hate you, buildings can crumble or be sold away, the air could hold toxic gas and water could hold poison, cars could crash and stories could be lies, but stars would never change. I knew that, it was common sense, I put everything I had into it because they were supposed to be there forever. They were supposed to be so much bigger than me, so much more. The stars wouldn’t leave me, I knew. They couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.

But this world doesn’t have stars. At least not my stars. The lights that shine through from behind the bridges are nothing but the same unnatural lights that I could see anywhere else I looked. Rays of fake, unnecessarily bright imposter stars that made me dizzy if I looked at them for too long.

It made me feel alone. Isolated. I could have traveled my whole world and still been able to look up at night sky and know I was still under the same moon as the people I loved, or still looking at the same stars I looked at as a child with my brother. I couldn't say that any more. Every trace of the life I'd lived, of all the people I knew, all the places I'd been, was gone. Gone and dead for hundreds of years. Not even a memory anymore.

I was so alone in this world.

This world made me so sad.

The sky here made me want to cry, when there were times when it used to be the only thing that would make me smile.

At first I felt betrayed. Rejected. Like my sky had left me behind, abandoned me to make my way on my own. But I left long before it did, didn't I? I was the one who disappeared. I was the one that left it behind. What did I do to cause this?

...

I wonder, where I'd be now, if I'd actually managed it. If I ever did somehow find a magic button to send me home, or if I ever did just pop back there out of nowhere, or if I'd somehow never even been dropped here at all in the first place.

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How much time has passed? I can't remember. I used to count the days, count the hours, count the seconds as I lay awake at night, and now I can't even remember.

All this time, I've been fighting back my grief. Fighting to remain in my state of denial, if only so I could function during the day, if only so I could work to get where I needed to be, if only because I felt like I had to.

The days, with work, and research, and crowds I had to work my way through and people I had to work to hide from, were easier. Sometimes something would hit me, I'd be eating the citrus-y soup during lunch and suddenly remember the brand name of the bread I used to buy. Or maybe the lights would flash in just the right way in the corner of my eye, and I'd remember a Disney movie I saw a few times as a kid that my sister used to hate.

It was during the nights though, especially in the nights when my nerves got jumpy, that my mirage of denial grew thinner, grew weaker.

It was in the nights before that strange quarantine, when the routine had set in and more than a week or two had passed of my time here, when the dreams first started.

In those nights, all the feelings and memories I'd avoided so desperately in the day hit me time after time again, taunting me with glittery flashbacks of things I'd forced myself to believe I'd forgotten, bringing front and center once again all the grief I'd been burying for a world I still considered to be alive.

I'd dream of peeling oranges in the backyard with my brother, and throwing the peels into the compost bin when we were done. I'd dream of searching for my parents in the stands at the start of my softball games, and waving when I saw them. I'd dream of running out to see my sister when she visited for the holidays, and being on my best behavior whenever she was around.

I'd dream of driving to the grocery store to get something my mom forgot to buy for dinner. I'd dream of taking notes during lectures for my old classes. I'd dream of looking up, and seeing stars.

And then I'd wake up, and wish every time that I didn't, because I wasn't supposed to wake up, I was supposed to stay there, in that world, in that time, in the place I was supposed to be.

Every time I fell asleep, I went back home. And every time I woke up, I'd be sent forward a thousand years in time again. Over and over. I grew terrified of falling asleep because I was terrified of waking up. I hated my dreams, hated my memories of everything I'd left behind, because none of it was real. It was more real than the entire world around me, and yet it wasn't real in the slightest, not any more, and nothing was real and nothing was not real and I'll spin back and forth between the two a thousand times over for the rest of my life until I finally decide to stop.

Those dreams stopped for a bit, back then. The nightmares came back, for a while, not long after I entered the quarantine. But right now I'm back to spinning. Still falling back and forth between then and now. I can't stop spinning. I'm not meant to be here, but I am, and my world keeps dragging me back to it, still pulling and pulling at my mind trying to bring it back to where it's supposed to be, but I can't go back, so it drags me into the floor, in circles across the room of time, spinning and spinning and spinning.

And there are no stars to stop me. No foundation to set my feet on. No lifeline to grab, no corner to hide and rest in, nothing but domino buildings and swirling light shows and a city with a heartbeat that will never be alive to me.

And all of that I had to ignore. All of that I had to push to the back of my mind, to silence, to hide under every guise I could muster.

And all of it came back in my dreams.