Aa
Maya's mother and Eli finally confronted her about how exhausted she looked and how strangely she had been acting. Maya could not keep lying, so she admitted that she had been taking sleeping pills and running away into dreams. They were hurt by what she had done, but they were also scared for her and wanted to help her.
As the truth came out, Maya learned that her health had been damaged and that she had missed important events in real life. She felt deep grief for everything she had lost, because some of that time could never come back. She understood then that the dream had taken away part of her life, and she could not recover it.
Even after that, Maya fell asleep again and went back into the dream against her own will. This time, the dream trapped her inside a perfect version of her life, and then that perfect world quickly began to rot into something horrifying. She saw that the dream was feeding on her need to avoid pain, and that made it even harder to escape.
At last, Maya understood that if she stayed in the dream, it would destroy her completely. She decided that she had to choose the real world, even if it was painful and difficult. That choice changed everything and became the turning point of the story.