The Universe Is Giving Me a Sign

I had dreamt of things before they happen in real life and it’s terrifying. The one dream that I will never forget is the one I had two weeks before my second oldest brother, Vu, made his way to Illinois State University. In my dream, it shows a cloudy day as my parents drive through a freeway bridge, going 80 miles an hour. I’m in the back of the car, having a staring contest with the odometer. Meanwhile, my mom is humming along to her favorite Vietnamese song on the passenger side. Suddenly, my dad snickers in the driver’s seat and calls the person to the right of us a bad driver. I glance over and ponder on what’s going on in that car as it begins to swerve. Then, before my mom’s favorite song can end, the person next to us flies ahead and flies to the right. The driver smashes onto the car in front of us and everything has gone up in flame- my family and I included. As cliche as it is, it was all just a dream. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but fast forward to my brother’s moving day, I decide to hang out with my friends instead because the drive there would be three hours long. That night, my oldest brother, Anh, tells me that our parents and he almost died in an accident on the freeway. He recites the crash and my mind immediately drifts back to the dream two weeks before. Instead of me in the back seat, it was my brother. Instead of death, my dad brakes just in time. To this day, I repeat to myself that “it’s just a coincidence” and that the nightmare had almost come true yet hadn’t. I know now that in a blink of an eye, everything can turn to dust.

I don’t want anything from the universe. Sometimes, I would like to think that fate is real, that someone out there is thrusting people and opportunities towards my way for a reason. I often ponder whether I should take a dive down to Wonderland or stay safe on shore with the clouds above my head; however, I have never been a huge believer and I don’t trust the “signs”. Was the universe sending me a warning through a car accident nightmare? I don’t know and I personally rather continue my life not knowing anything. I probably shouldn’t have shrugged it off, but in the end, it didn’t really mean anything to me. Sure, what if I had been in the car that day with my parents? Then would my dream turn into reality? By choosing my friends over a dreadful three hour car drive back and forth from my brother’s university, it seems unlikely that I stopped my family’s accident. Either way, the driver next to my family would have fallen asleep on the freeway and died. Nonetheless, I don’t know anything about dreams and the meaning behind them. I merely think that it is unnecessary for the world to send me signals because no, I don’t fear the unknown. Instead, I look forward to it. I feel as if life is robbing me away from “living in the moment”. Maybe knowing certain things can help me through a tough situation in the future, but if things are meant to be, then I just wish to just let them be. In the end, I would like to think that nothing is written in the stars because I want to be the designer of my own misery and bliss.