This is all just a bad dream. This day, this week, maybe this whole mediocre life. A long, intense, incredibly lucid dream, but still just a dream. If I can somehow just concentrate hard enough, force my way through these concrete layers of illusion, I will suddenly wake up. This mess will all be over. I'll open my eyes to the sight of sunlight filtering through the silky cloth of a parachute draped over my face, white with red and blue patches, rippling in the breeze. I'll hear the sound of my mother's voice from somewhere nearby, and seagulls in the distance. Rumble of the surf. Other sounds I don’t even recognize.

I will be completely blank for a moment. I won't be able to pull the parachute off my face, because I won't be ready yet to see where I am, who I am, (how old I am, what I look like, what I’m doing, why there’s a parachute over my head) and try to recollect this alien life from which I've been absent for so long. But after a few minutes, when memory starts to flood back, and that dismal dream of planet Earth fades, I'll laugh and pull the parachute off, and my vision will go all white, blinding me, because everything is so beautiful and perfect.