So, here goes. I looked for communities where I could tell this story after watching a few insomniac videos exploring Reddit. There were all kinds of weird stories, each stranger than the last, and it's been a few months now since the ending of my story came to me. Well, the ending, or rather the strange place I've found myself in today. It's somewhere between a glitch and the paranormal, but these communities have so many restrictions that I was afraid my story wouldn't fit.
I've told my mother, but never my sisters. I've told my therapist, who knows quite a bit about my history with this dream. But taking a step back and telling the story like this, anonymously, in the middle of the internet, might help me give it a place outside myself, offer you something to read during a sleepless night, and find other words for it. It's a personal story, and I want to take the time to tell it in my own words.
For both your sake and mine: this isn't a request for advice, support or a response. It's just... my strange little story, coming straight from my chest.
Dad (2010)
My father died when I was still fourteen. I have conscious memories of him: tender, firm, the kind of man who wanted the best for me and my two sisters, and funny, too. I've missed my dad every day for sixteen years, but he must be so proud to see all of us today, my mother and my sisters included.
My father died in hospital following both a road accident and the surgery he underwent afterwards. When I was little, I didn't understand everything properly. I filled in the gaps later, when I was old enough to look at things more clearly, but my mother was always there to explain things to us properly, without prudishness and without being overprotective.
He was driving home at night. The road and the weather were normal. It was night, and it was raining lightly, but there was nothing particularly dangerous about the conditions. He was driving straight along the road when he reached an intersection. Another car failed to stop at the intersection, drove straight into him, hit his car and apparently sped away without the driver even trying to help him. A literal hit-and-run.
My father was badly hurt. Other drivers who came along shortly afterwards found him, stopped, called the fire brigade and the police, and he was taken to hospital. My father had to undergo a transplant, and it was probably the transplant that went wrong: rejection, an infection, and, despite attempts at treatment that his body couldn't withstand, a rapid deterioration. My mother was there for him. We visited him less often than she did. I don't know everything they might have said to each other, but I often imagine their final moments together.
I was lucky enough to say goodbye to him shortly beforehand, while he was still conscious, still making me laugh, just as I wanted to remember him. That's what I think of when I think of him, and it makes me happy, rather than remembering him as a vegetable under morphine, waiting to die. He was forty-eight, and he left us like someone wise, still young, curious about death, without fighting it. The last image I have of him, closing the bedroom door behind me while he smiled at me tenderly, is the one that feels most like him.
The driver was identified. There was an investigation, prosecution and trial. Here, too, my mother kept us informed, but only as much as she felt necessary. My older sister accompanied her all the time. I was only able to attend towards the end, and my younger sister never went at all. I saw a few faces: members of the defendant's family, her daughter, a child who must have been around my age. But my memories of those people soon became blurred, and I never really held on to them.
The defendant received a heavy sentence for the hit-and-run and the aggravating circumstances of driving under the influence. Oh, I'm French, and I'm doing some translation work as I write this, but I imagine the law can't be all that different in these circumstances. I'd only attended the conclusion of the proceedings, and I remember that at fifteen, I wasn't thinking about the compensation we would receive or the punishment the guilty person would face. I felt neither vengeful nor resentful. I preferred to understand how someone could end up doing something like that, and I also felt sorry for her daughter, who was going to lose a dad, too.
Night Drive (2010ā2026)
As a teenager, I had this dream a lot. I've been having it regularly, about once a month, ever since the first time. It has never left me. And ever since, I've felt very uncomfortable being a passenger in a car. Getting my driving licence was the first thing I did as soon as I turned sixteen, and I'm still always looking for opportunities to drive. Even when it's not my car. Seriously, my friends know me well, and they're brave to put up with me. As a passenger, I'm very uncomfortable. I need to sit in the back, or even lie down if I'm alone: anywhere but the front passenger seat, the *death seat*, rather than the driver's seat, which is where I sit in the dream.
It's night-time, and I'm in the front passenger seat. It's not raining, but there are lights like the ones in a tunnel. It could be any night, but I have the impression it's autumn or winter, because in some versions of the dream I stick my head out of the window and the air is very cold. I'm just a normal passenger. There's nothing anxiety-inducing about the situation. I don't know where we're going, but I'm not being kidnapped or anything. Someone is driving at night, we enter a mountain tunnel, and that's it. This part of the dream is peaceful. The scenery changes from one occurrence to the next. It's very contemplative: I look ahead or watch the landscape through the window, that's all.
Sometimes I mumble to myself or hum a tune, but after a while, I always end up turning towards the driver. His profile is dark, always blurry. I get his attention by speaking to him. He turns towards me, looks at me or says something, and I wake up with a horrible start, like I'm coming out of a nightmare. You'd have to hear me waking up when I have this dream. My partners have been lucky so far. Anyway, I have a chance to see his face, and the dream collapses.
But here's the thing: I do see him. I know I see his face, and that the dream ends at that moment. I'm even aware of it from one dream to the next, aware that I saw his face the last time. While I'm dreaming, I remember. But when I wake up, it's impossible to picture him, describe him or bring to mind the face I know I've just seen. I see him in the dream, and he disappears along with it.
Apart from a few variations, this dream has never really changed. The scenery, the music on the radio, what I tell him: those things vary, but the structure is terribly consistent. A textbook case. On a long, straight stretch of road like the one where my father died, the driver looks at me, and his face fades away.
Juliette (2026)
At the beginning of this year, my mother insisted on talking to me about something important. She'd been rather discreet about it for several weeks, wondering whether she should bring it up. She's a very gentle, wise and level-headed person who takes the time to think things through. She's also learned to take on more than her fair share of other people's burdens, so we have to find her some flaws, too.
Shortly after New Year's, she received a call from a young woman who told her she was twenty-eight, barely my age. She sounded moved, shy and nervous, but was trying to keep herself composed. She'd done a lot of work digging through records and finding a way to contact my family. In France, there's an emerging process called restorative justice, which is still somewhat marginal. There was a very beautiful film about it. She'd gone through the process with the help of a lawyer, and she'd taken the first step.
Her name was Juliette. Her parents were separated, and she visited her mother in the countryside from time to time. Her father had died at the beginning of the previous autumn. He'd been released from prison. He'd been scraping by, living in fairly miserable conditions. He'd seen his daughter again, without daring to ask too much of her, a little broken, a little sad. She, for her part, felt as though she'd abandoned everyone. She worked in Paris, far away from the South-West of France where we'd both spent our childhoods.
And when he died in the little place where he'd managed to get by, apparently living like a drunk, she felt as though she'd ruined too many people's lives for someone her age. I don't live in Paris, but I go there sometimes, for work too, and I take the opportunity to do a little sightseeing. Still, I couldn't live there all the time. I need nature too much, and I need to run.
Juliette wanted to talk to people she imagined might be close to her, people who had been through something similar. She didn't want to apologise on her father's behalf or speak words that weren't hers to say. She wanted to understand her father, and it took me fifteen years to realise that I, too, wanted to understand everyone. Just that, without hatred or violence.
My mother didn't really dare to talk to her much. She didn't know what to say. She understood that Juliette was looking for something, but she wasn't the person who could give it to her. Intuitively, she suggested that Juliette talk to me instead. Maybe because I was closer to her age, or because she'd sensed something in us that felt alike. I thought about it a lot after my mother told me. I kept that phone number for a long time. I'm the kind of person who runs a lot, who runs away. I don't even know whether I've left that behind me.
Then, sometime in the spring, I received a message from Juliette's number. I'd never dared to take the initiative myself, but I replied positively. We called each other a few times and agreed to meet when we both had some free time in Paris. I took a weekend after finishing a work meetup on Friday. She welcomed me into a lovely apartment, very cosy, lo-fi, good vibes. We got along without awkwardness, without any coldness between us. She could even become a good friend, and that's almost what she's gradually becoming.
Of course, we talked in depth, and we made a lot of progress together. About her father, about mine. We put the guilt to rest. It had nothing to do with that. It was in the past for both of us, and we realised that neither of us had to carry the guilt for what had happened to the other person's family.
Juliette gets emotional when she talks about her father. I took a little tour through her memories. She told me about his life and showed me her old records from before the accident and the trial. It was a family that had been close-knit, torn apart by this tragedy, and then...
On her computer, as we travelled through her story, there was a photograph of her and her father. A very beautiful photograph, in black and white, in front of a fountain. He was holding her in his arms, looking straight at the camera, sincerely, while she was pressed against him, almost hidden from view. He was a round, friendly-looking man, with a kind, open face, very little hair and a very short haircut, with an empathetic gaze.
I'd seen him in other group photographs. Perhaps I'd vaguely associated him with the man I remembered from the trial, but nothing had really struck me. But when I saw him looking at me in that photograph, I had no doubt.
It was him. He was the driver in my dream. He came back to me instantly. It had been him for fifteen years, from the very beginning. Looking at that photograph, I froze. I didn't tell Juliette. She sensed that something important was happening to me, but we're not close friends yet, and I haven't told her about this. Maybe I shouldn't. I'm not sure I even want to. We still talk, and we tell each other what we need to share. We even went to the cinema together to see the film about restorative justice.
But here we are, approaching the end of the year, and since the spring, I've had a face to put to the man my unconscious mind had placed behind the wheel of a car for fifteen years, only to erase him from my conscious memory. I've had the dream again, as usual, at the same pace. It hasn't fundamentally changed: it stops at the same moment, he turns towards me, and I see him. Now, when I wake up, I retain the image. That's all. Waking up still catches me by surprise, but perhaps I'm a little less terrified, a little less haunted by the nightmare. I don't know how it will evolve, or whether it even needs to.
I know he has a name, a face, a family life, and a life that was dark and sad for half of its duration, as well as a daughter he would have been happy to watch grow up. My father and hers were two men who hadn't asked for any of this, two men life cut down like nothing. I don't blame either of them. I blame death, which strikes at random, and that's more than enough. There are plenty of other things in this world we have to fight.
I know that her father, just like mine, must be happy to see us, and all of this comforts me a lot when I don't feel like sleeping and getting into the car at night.
Kisses, Reddit.
Take care of yourself.
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