Left at the Station

It took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost. Not on a road, not in a forest, but in my own home, lost in my own thoughts, in the silence left behind a dream I couldn´t forget

When I was younger, I had this recurring dream. I can barely remember the details now, but it used to mean something to me.

It always took place on a warm summer morning with a slight chilly breeze in the air. The sunrise cast a soft orange glow across everything, and the world smelled faintly of wet grass. I was at a train station, just me and my mother. She wore a tan coat and held a vintage suitcase in one hand, standing quietly at the edge of the platform, ready to board and leave me behind.

The trains rattled by in the background, pigeons cooed somewhere above us, and all I could do was stand there watching her. My mother didn’t say anything. She just walked toward the train. I could only see her from the back, her dark, shoulder-length hair swaying gently in the wind.

She was crying, too.

Through the window, as the train pulled away, she gave me a sad smile and a soft wave.

I always woke up from that dream drenched in cold sweat, real tears drying on my cheeks. And for a brief moment, everything felt real.

The sunlight filtering through my childhood bedroom matched the dream too closely. The smell of the morning air, the sound of birds outside the window, it all made my skin crawl. I’d run downstairs with my chest tightening, terrified that my mother would be gone.

Her side of the bed was empty.

I felt lost.

I checked the kitchen. Nothing. The living room. Nothing.

Our dog wasn’t there either. I tried to stay calm, repeating to myself that it was probably just a walk, that everything was fine, but the panic sat in my throat like a stone, my chest tightening in fear.

I ran to the kitchen and climbed onto the counter to peer out the window, my heart pounding. “This dream’s followed me since our last apartment,” I whispered. “Nothing bad has ever actually happened.” But I sat there, waiting like a lost puppy for his owner to return.

Fifteen minutes passed. Then twenty. At thirty, I was crying again, quietly, trying not to disturb anyone else.

And then I saw her walking back toward the house.

That moment, the relief, the way the sunrise seemed to glow inside my chest. I’ll never forget it, the feeling of finding my way back home. I wiped my face and opened the door for her. She looked surprised to see me awake so early on a Saturday.

I told her it was too hot to sleep.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. Not about the dream. Not about how scared I was.

She didn’t notice anything was wrong.

Later, back in my room, I lay on my bed thinking about how hard it’s always been to express what I’m feeling, losing myself in past memories. And I remembered why.

The first time I had that dream, I ran to her crying, telling her everything. She hugged me, then waved it off and dismissively said, “It’s just a dream. Go back to bed.”

I remembered writing my first love letter, egged on by my friends, and hiding it in my drawer. A few months later, when I had already forgotten about it, she found it. She laughed and said I was too young for that. Told me to focus on school.

And I remembered the worst of it, the day she read my diary.

I’d just gotten out of the shower, and there she was, sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom in her bathrobe, reading it.

Her hair was still wrapped up in a towel. She looked up and said, “That’s pretty boring. You should try writing about more interesting things.”.

I was at a loss for words, obviously, an eight-year-old girl doesn´t exactly have anything interesting to write about, yet the intrusion made me feel embarrassed and small.

That night, I threw the diary away. It was pink and sparkly, the kind a little girl should feel safe writing in, the way I used to. But after that, it just made me feel exposed.

For years, I was too scared to write.

When I finally did start again, it was in English. She doesn’t speak the language, so it felt safer. I was in sixth grade, and even then, I still filtered everything I wrote. I was afraid, cautious. I threw away every journal as soon as I finished it.

But slowly, I got better. I started writing like no one would ever read it.

By seventeen, I wrote almost every day. I even brought my notebook on our last family vacation.

One night, after a couple of cocktails, I worked up the courage and tried to talk to her about the diary incident, to explain how it had affected me. I hoped for some understanding, something to guide me back home safely.

She brushed it off. Said she didn’t remember it being a big deal. Then casually added that a few years ago, she’d found another journal of mine but stopped trying to read it once she realized it was in a foreign language.

I never told her how much that hurt. I still can’t. Every time I try, my throat closes and my chest tightens. I feel like a child again, standing at the train station, watching someone I love leave and knowing the words I need to say are getting lost within me.

Maybe that dream was never about her leaving. Maybe it was about being left alone with everything I didn’t know how to express, about losing my voice.

And maybe writing in secret, in English, is the only way I’ve ever really known how to stay, how to stop being lost and find my way back home. Even if no one ever reads it.