The Dream Train
One Sentence at a Time, We Find Our Way Back
Before the Story, A Question
A few days ago, I posed a question inside the Beyond Platitudes chat room:
“If you could whisper one sentence to your younger self, what would you say?”
The answers came in slowly at first — quiet, vulnerable, careful.
Then, like memory itself, they gathered momentum.
Some replies were direct. Others were poetic. Some sounded like warnings, others like blessings.
But all of them — every single one — carried something sacred: truth earned through time.
Rather than let those lines live and die inside a chat thread, I did what I always do when meaning begins to stir: I turned it into a story.
What follows isn’t just fiction. It’s a reflection of you — the voices in this community, stitched together across time, pain, insight, and growth.
It’s not meant to be “complete.” It’s meant to remind you that you’re not alone — not in your wondering, not in your past, and not in what you wish you had heard when you needed it most.
This is The Dream Train — and it runs on memory, grace, and the words we wish we could send backward.
It only ever came at night.
Not every night — just the ones when she was too tired to think and too wired to rest. In that space between sleep and surrender, she would hear the distant rumble first. Then the lights: a flicker in the fog, the hum of steel rails, and that strange glowing engine that pulsed more than it roared.
The train never changed.
What changed were the passengers.
Each car held a younger version of her — some that felt familiar, others she’d nearly forgotten. And each night she boarded, the same quiet rule applied:
“You may whisper one sentence to each of them.
But in return, you must take something back with you.”
She never knew who made the rule. But it always felt sacred.
Car One: Age 5
She found herself staring at a girl with tangled hair and scraped knees, gripping a stuffed rabbit like it was oxygen.
The girl looked up, full of questions.
She leaned down and whispered,
“Pssst… it’s okay to be real like the Velveteen Rabbit.”
The little girl didn’t say anything, but she loosened her grip on the toy just a bit — and handed her a piece of crumpled construction paper with a messy crayon sun.
She folded it into her pocket and stepped into the next car.
Car Two: Age 8
This version of her was pacing in a school uniform, lips pressed tight, fists balled up.
She knelt beside her and said,
“You are doing just fine.”
The girl blinked hard, then silently pressed a friendship bracelet into her hand — frayed, uneven, and made with love.
Car Three: Age 12
The train car smelled like locker rooms and anxiety.
This girl was caught between eye rolls and tears, hiding under too-big headphones.
She said softly,
“Be weird, be bold, be wrong — no one is paying as much attention as you think.”
The girl cracked the smallest smirk, reached into her hoodie, and gave her a sticker-covered notebook with dreams scribbled in the margins.
Car Four: Age 17
Here was the overachiever. The girl with too many calendars, too few questions, and a constant undercurrent of fear.
She looked her right in the eye and said,
“Don’t wait for the stars to align. Just go for it now.”
The teenager hesitated — and then handed her a coffee-stained acceptance letter. It didn’t matter where it was from. It was what it meant that mattered.
Car Five: Age 22
She walked in and found her younger self staring into her phone, tears held back by pride and pressure.
This version had just made a big choice. Moved cities. Started something scary.
She whispered,
“You have so much more time than you think you do. Not everything has to happen by 30.”
The younger woman let out the kind of breath you don’t know you’re holding until it’s gone — and passed her a broken wristwatch. The time was frozen. 11:11.
Car Six: Age 26
Here was the girl in a perfectly curated relationship, living someone else’s dream, not sure how to say no.
She sat down across from her and said,
“You are the most important person in your life.”
This version stared at her for a long moment — then took off a ring she never wanted and pressed it into her palm. Not out of bitterness. Out of relief.
Car Seven: Age 30
This car was quiet. A desk. A laptop. A wall of sticky notes and ambitions.
She didn’t knock, just stepped in and said,
“Stay focused on your purpose.”
That version looked tired. But grateful. She handed her a list — not a to-do list, but a “don’t forget why” list, half-crossed out and still sacred.
Car Eight: Age 35
A woman sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by pieces of herself she didn’t know how to hold: grief, ambition, motherhood, silence.
She said gently,
“View everything — the good and the bad — as a healing opportunity.”
The woman gave her a seashell, rough on one side, smooth on the other. A gift shaped by pressure and time.
Car Nine: Age 38
This car was dark. Rain tapped on the windows. A version of her sat curled in the corner, unsure of what she was supposed to be anymore.
She whispered,
“Things will get better.”
The woman didn’t look up — but slid over a photograph, edges torn, people missing, but light still leaking through.
Car Ten: Age 42
This version looked composed. Accomplished. But something behind her eyes whispered exhaustion.
She sat beside her and said,
“You don’t have to earn your right to exist — just breathe, and begin.”
This version exhaled — the kind of breath that felt like a letting go — and handed her nothing but a folded napkin with the word grace written in ink.
The Final Car
This car was empty. No one to speak to.
Only a mirror. And in it — herself.
Not younger. Not older. Just her.
She opened her hand. Eleven objects. Eleven whispers. Eleven moments she thought she’d lost but somehow found again.
The train began to slow. She stood, lighter now. Not fixed. But more whole.
She stepped off into the fog of morning — and for the first time in a long time,
she wasn’t in a hurry.
Sometimes the things we needed to hear weren’t revelations.
They were reminders.
And sometimes, you have to go back in a dream
just to come home to yourself.
Matt DiGeronimo is a writer, thinker, and life strategist who simplifies the complex and challenges conventional wisdom. Please message me for public speaking or collaboration opportunities
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Tears are flowing. Thank your for such a poignant and powerful piece.
Masterpiece 🙏🏻💖