Title.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Has anyone read this poem? I had to. For school. Five years ago. I was... Fifteen. I was fifteen five years ago. It's been five years. I'm twenty. And adult. I'm twenty and technically an adult though I won't feel that's true until I'm providing for myself and living apart from my parents I guess. I suppose we all have a metric. For success and what we think will make us feel happy and satisfied and fulfilled in life.
When I was young, I thought adoration and validation, love and affection would do it. A hero or saviour type to stitch me back together. Someone to wipe away the things I felt were broken. People came. Put more cracks in my foundation without a care in the world. The kinder ones didn't rebuild a thing. I walked beside them a while and pushed them away when it got too much.
For better or worse... I'm here. Alive. Every dream I have seems to get wrecked rather quickly and easily. I don't know where they went. There's probably a land of broken dreams in my brain. Some cavern. Bottomless and yet, you can tell what's down there is grey. Devoid of light. No soul left. Above it all, this pit of nothingness are little white glow bugs that flit around.
Hope.
Not because I want it there but because my younger self needed it to survive at times and so do I. My dreams had nowhere to go but farther into me when I gave them up, piece by piece. The dream that my father could love me the way I wanted him to when truly, he's the man he is and has been himself for sixty years, more to come. We all choose our change. The ones we decide we need to make, the ones we actually do make. And sometimes they help. And sometimes they don't.
Dreams are nice and all but I'm more accustomed to nightmares. They feel more likely. More real because they hurt and the pain feels so much more tangible when it's felt. To me. I lean into the hard things cos prettier things feel more fleeting.
Everything is choice. I didn't get it when I was young. Part of me still doesn't. I thought I was stuck. I thought I had to listen to every word my parents said, even when I was told that the god we were meant to serve sent people like me to hell for loving different. I felt that if I followed the world enough and fit in enough, I would be safe and so... Why not hate my fatness and my social aversion and my "strange" interests and about everything about me? Why not decide my body and mind simply weren't correct?
That my dreams weren't correct?
It takes a lot to change a misconception you've held since childhood. And remember, everything is both true and false. Everything can be believed and disbelieved. Proven and disproven as long as that's what a person wants. It's all perspective. Every last piece of this world is built on choice. Some people chose wars and the power of fancy coloured paper and religious beliefs and discrimination... People followed along, as we so often do. Because sometime it seems easier to just bow your head. Most times. But there is always. Always. A cost.
I dunno. I felt like a weak person a very long time. A coward. A puppet. I used to write stuff like that in the back of my notebooks. I remember what was my first class studying law because my father picked it for me. Laughing and crying at the back of the class, head buried in my arms, hoping no one could tell I was going mad, trying to understand why I couldn't simply control myself.
If you leave a dream to die, it doesn't matter whether it shrivels or festers, shrinks or runs. It doesn't matter if it explodes. The residue will remain. The shrapnel will piece at your skin and your mind and your heart, whether you want it to or not. Scars will be left as reminders of the betrayal of the self. And you get to choose every day to let more go or not.
Dreams are an inextricable piece of being alive. Where one dies, another often follows, no matter how long it takes. Many have too many to know what to do with. I dream of a version of existence where I feel safe and confident and at peace with my choices. With myself. A place where I have come to a state of utter self-acceptance. A place where I let go of the world and cling to myself. To my hopes - the idiotic visions of better that kept me alive all my life.
I will be a dreamer till the day I die. I'm almost certain of it. I do it every time I plunge into yet another world of fiction. I do it every time things get too hard in this reality of ours. It's so much prettier in worlds you have control over. The ones you can traverse freely. Some day, I'll realise - truly realise - that this reality I am in is already mine to shape to my wishes. One day I'll realise my dream is my own and an easy one to reach at that. One day, I will let go of the "them" and plunge into the "I" like the hopeful, idiotic Icarus I am.
I don't expect eternal happiness. I don't think it's possible to be fully satisfied forever. But what would life be without that little, annoying prick of hope for those prettier, fleeting moments?
I'd rather live and die a crazy fool. Things would be much more drab and boring otherwise. I wish for better chapters in my stories and a happier ending than the Nightmare King in my thoughts expects.
I dream and so, I live.
Ratatouille
A man sits down, slumped next to a wall, a gun in one hand and a rat in the other. His eyes glint as he watches me, mine widened with shock and terror and plain, deafening disgust as I watch him sink his teeth into the squealing animal. What I would give to turn back time, get grabbed by those assholes and taken away in their flashy copcar so I don't have to witness this sickening shit.
Its blood stains his hand, stains his teeth, drips to the floor and gently laps at the edge of my boot.
The pure, dark redness stains us both, now.
No one's born without it, right? Nothing clean, elegant and pristine about being thrown into this world.
I watch him as he bites into its neck, sneaking in littler chunks of flesh past his lips as he keeps his gaze on me. Perhaps I should run. The guy seems like a lunatic. Then again, I remember the story my father told me of cooking and eating grasshoppers during the Nigerian Civil War. No victors, no vanquished... Sometimes it isn't madness but a hunger that becomes our driving force.
We all go about our days dancing about on this human-constructed stage after all, don't we? For a reason, too, one that triumphs all others. You either live or die. One or the other always. You don't get a choice between.
When I inch closer to him, he holds the gun to me. I stare down the barrel and am reminded of every action movie I've ever watched. Those characters would kick it out of his hands with such fluidity - the actors in real life much less likely to.
I'm a human being. I'm right here. So I make a choice like everyone must when faced with death. The emotion I lead with? Not anger, not fear, not horror, even as they boil and bubble within me. Curiosity. Just curiosity.
"I'm not going to take the rat from you."
"Wouldn't have let ya, kid."
"What... Are you doing?"
"Ever heard of the last supper?"
"You're going to die?"
"We all are. I'm expediting the damned process."
"Okay. Okay. That, I get. But a rat? Fuck, I would've grabbed some really good junk food if I knew I was about to end myself."
"I don't have any money."
"Fine. I would've stolen some, then. I mean... Right before taking your life... You really didn't have a better plan than live rodent?"
"I almost killed you just now, you know."
"Yeah. I saw. I was there."
"This is a shit reaction."
"Well, the cops were chasing me down, sir so... I'm all out of fucks to give right now. I guess I'm also waiting for a type of finality too. A kind of decision. Judgement. Except yours is gonna be self-inflicted and permanent. Mine... Who knows?"
"...tell me. What are you going down for? Prison isn't the place for a lass like you."
"Don't worry about me or my gender. What's a dying old man's business with some youngster's life story? You'd get bored. Maybe I would too. No. Better to pretend our meeting wasn't fated and let the coincidence stay as it did. You keep eating your raw meat and do yourself away once you're done. I'll go fuck off."
"...Do you think a change of clothes might be enough to hide you a bit? The poor and homeless style might fit you quite well."
"Let's try it out and see. As a trade, I tell you my story... Maybe you tell me yours. And hey, if we both survive the night not in jail and not dead, suffering but still here, I'll find you a burger. I can't leave you with this as a last meal. I'd feel guilty knowing the sight that made me almost throw up and consider turning myself in was it for you. Do we have a deal, sir?"
"You'll entertain me and get me free food? Sure, I can waste some extra hours on that. Didn't have any big plans tonight, anyway."
Deliberations were made
I get on my knees and breathe in and out, hating the slight flash of relief I feel. Perhaps I may never have the fear of people judging me if they're simply gone but that is no prize compared to existence wiping out without me going with it. Or is this death? Is this purgatory or hell? Heaven? Have I finally gone mad and broke my mind? What the fuck do I-
A hand touches my shoulder. I look up at the familiar skin, backing away when I notice my face looking back at me. It's rather uncanny to see yourself in 3d, knowing it's the way others see you. The mirror of me goes around my frozen form and clicks its tongue, then sits in front of me.
"Don't you want to see me, too? This isn't an opportunity you'll always get, kit. And who knows how long it'll last?"
"I'm... Dreaming. Aren't I? But usually when I realise it's a dream, it means I'm in danger and then I wake up. I should be awake by now."
"But instead, you're here with me. Two Icaruses. Icari? Icari works. I like how it sounds."
"...me too."
I sit up and stare at it, waving my hand with the silly expectation that it will follow me. Instead, it languidly stretches back, and then stares at me a bit longer, waiting. I suppose I'm waiting too. Someone must speak first but if it's anything like me, we are both so filled with questions that we are paralysed by it.
"That man, mirror me... Was that... A god of some kind? Was I put here because I tried to give him money? Is this a reward or punishment?"
"I didn't expect God to have dreadlocks. No way it's one from the main religions - those guys aren't that cool."
"Will you focus?! We might be trapped here forever!"
"...not if you hope not. Tell me... If you could've gone anywhere. Anywhere at all. Where would it be?"
"I... There's so many places coming to mind. The Eiffel Tower, for some reason. A field of flowers. A... A pride parade-"
Suddenly I find myself on a float. Lito from Sense8 waves at me, peckes his husband and they both gesture for me to join their dancing and laughing. They look so sweet together, so real and I am so very, very frightened. My eyes widen as I shake my head to clear this delusion, startled when it all wafts away in a moment.
"I remember that series," it says softly. "You and I felt so much pain because it wasn't real but so much safety because in that moment, earphones in, tears rushing from our eyes, it was more true than anything else in the world. Do you..."
"I remember. But why do you? Are you me? Do you have this power?"
"I'm an extension of you. The voice in your head that you talk to, I suppose. One of them, anyway, seeing as I'm not an asshole, not am I extra soft and sweet. I'm... A more neutral, apathetic side of you. Likely chosen because you were freaking out and needed to be grounded and you're used to helping yourself alone."
"It's safer that way. And maybe... I was lonely." It stares at me. They stare at me. Then they nod and clear their throat.
"So? What now? Are we going to create planet Zeeweirld, finally?"
"Do you not realise how many people were vanished from the face of existence because of this? Some curious god who wanted to see what one of its creations may do with its power? Do you realise how much time it took for the earth to form as it did? For the universe to come into being - blackholes, galaxies, asteroids... For every little and big living thing to come into being... You want me to be responsible for destroying that?"
We are now seated on a space backdrop. However, it looks fake. You can tell it's some sort of a green screen or painting. I do my best but my memory and true interstellar beauty cannot measure up to each other. I usually think so small. The sky. A bird or two to entertain me. I lose myself in what isn't real most times to make it easier for me to exist. I avoid the emptiness but this...
It's all there is, now.
"We could do anything... Have anything. We don't have to suffer anymore. We don't have to be around people anymore. Come on, Self. Just one day of this?"
"The concept of time doesn't exist now either, not that it ever truly and fully did. We made it too important. That ruined a lot of things."
"Hey. Stop going the philosophical route! We can paint galaxies, like you just did, with our mind! You get to sit on clouds and turn them into cotton candy. You get to literally dance among the stars Sinatra style and create the perfect partner to kiss if you wish. Why are you thinking of giving it up...? Why...?"
"Everything you said? It was humans before that gave it all their name. Somebody called clouds clouds. Somebody made cotton candy before people began to fantasise that the clouds tasted like such. The stars weren't made to be danced beside. Not by me. I'd rather look at them from my room. No... It would be cruel of me to bring humanity back into existence. We will suffer. But it would be cruel of me to deny humanity the chance of existing. Whoever that godlike entity was tried to pass on their dilemma to me. Curious about what I would do. But see, I'm curious too. Not about creating my own world of this empty space. I want to see what happens to the real, human me. I want to see what and who I will love and hate. What will hurt me again. What will bring me safety and joy. I want to know if I survive this thing or if I succumb to the seas within that want me drowned. And as I will it? So it shall be."
I wake up and find out my classes for the day are cancelled. A strange dream was had but I hardly remember it, now. I remind myself I need to go out and buy something to eat when I sleep and wake again at 1pm. I remind myself I must try to exist, even if I don't feel like I do, even if I sometimes don't want to.
Alone, I venture into the world. The sun is angrier than it should be. I suggest some gentleness to Anyanwu, the Igbo god of the sun, amused when a cloud later does me the kindness of granting my request. Coincidence or manifestation? The answer is whatever I believe. And I believe both and neither because what is possible if not everything?
I feel eyes on me and turn, faced with an empty space where I feel something... Perhaps someone was. It disorients me but I do as I always do. Try to put myself together. So this is life? I mentally greet a lizard on the way, then struggle with the weight of my groceries against the haze taking over my hungry mind.
This is life.
Lucy
Lucian "Lucifer" Last-name is the most easy-going person there is. People think he's lazy. Hopeless. Destined to be a failure all his life. Doomed to being alone because he cares about nothing and nobody. And damn. The "people" in question are his family and they'd be right.
Lucifer doesn't know when it started, he just knows this is it. He doesn't bother looking into the past to figure out why he is the way he is. He doesn't bother looking into the future for some version of him that's better or worse. He'll get there either way, right?
Lucifer cares so little that you'd think he wasn't human at all. A demon akin to his namesake with the deadly sin of sloth as his god. Truthfully, he doesn't understand the big deal of things. He just believes it makes sense to not give a fuck.
His lack of interest has gotten him arrested, yelled at and almost killed by his old buddies. He can remember feeling pretty much empty as they dragged him through that field and beat him through and held a gun to his head, as if death would be any different than how he was in life.
Maybe he was born with no soul. No emotions to feed. He's not sure. He just likes to have fun when he can, best enjoyed by himself and deal with people's bullshit as little as possible. There is no villainy in that. He thinks society will control him if he gives anyone even an inch so why care about people, anyway? Why bother with family when you'll have to deal with grief when they're gone or pain when they turn around and say they hate you for being your strange, creepy, dead, pansexual stoner atheist self or wish you were never born?
On the off chance he's destined o rot in hell, as his mother once told him, he has a feeling the devil would either be impressed or outrage by his reactions to torture fun time. Everyone he'd ever met either liked him or hated him instantly but he felt pretty indifferent to himself so neither reaction made sense.
All things being equal, he'd be dead eventually so why not sit back, relax and try to enjoy it, right?
Click-clack
Hell.
A hell of my own making.
What better way to live is there?
The gods must laugh when we make references to the places they roam as if we know a thing about them.
Or maybe they pity us because they can tell it is true.
All of the above?
I keep trying to remind myself that
If I die,
Then they win.
I don't know who "they" is.
It's something I say to pretend I'm not fighting myself and hacking away at the insides of my own mind for comfort.
Is it the faceless society I'm detached from yet surrounded by?
My blurred co-workers?
The shadows in my head?
I try to remind myself that I lose if
I die but then I realise
I'm losing either way.
So I take myself away the way I did as a kid who was
Constantly on their own with mainly stuffed animals and
Story books for company.
There's a thousand different poisons to pick from.
I choose fantasy.
Fiction.
Books.
Movies.
The internet.
Daydreams.
Sometimes I'm scared of falling asleep because the moment it happens, I'll wake up in another day.
I used to stay up on the days I hated myself most till 5am, 6am, 7,
Hoping the suffering would draw me to a better conclusion.
Sleep wasn't the answer.
Sleep was a kindness; a moment of being a non-entity.
Existence was the hell and now I've
Led myself even deeper into that dark, empty space,
Scrawled my name over the front door in blood and nail clippings,
Fake smiles and ironed shirts.
In some other world, I'm climbing some mountain somewhere or
Hopped up on space berries
Or on a train to one of my many unearned mansions or
In a coma
Or dead.
In any of these universes, would I really be happier then?
In another world I have more to me than a jangly typewriter as a best friend and
Piles of papers full of the dark muck of my indecision that'll never go away.
I'll never fully want to leave and I'll never fully want to stay.
Not at my job.
Not with friends, real or imagined.
Not with some hypothetical lover.
Not with this apartment and this damned life and this jangly old typewriter that I like the click-clack noises of.
You piss me off and I love you more than I love my own father and I
Hate myself just a little for it.
Alright, then.
I'm finished now, I think.
With no fucking clue of what I wrote and all intention to hide you away like all the others when I've read it.
The truth burns too much.
To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question.
To dream or not to dream.
To breathe or to die; I'll be here typing and bored and lost until the clock strikes midnight and
This game called life ends in overtime and a neither satisfactory nor unsatisfactory draw.
A Wednesday.
A day ago, I woke up again, smacked with the quick realisation that life is still a thing I am living. So I get up, even though I do not want to. We have a lecture extra, that day. One, two, three. When I was young, in secondary school, classes lasted from eight to three with more than a few subjects a day but here I am, already stressed out over what I was once used to.
Everything changes. Nothing stays the same.
I get ready. I ignore the slight feeling of discomfort my roommate gives me as I always do. When it comes to people, it's always a question of when will they hurt me- will they hurt me- how- when- where- what can I do to avoid it- I learnt some time ago that no matter how small and insignificant you try to make yourself, sometimes it just isn't enough. Someone may still be gunning for you.
That's when you realise that it doesn't matter what you do. Because you still exist. The only time you can know for certain there will be no sense of discomfort or unsafety is when there can be no sense of comfort or safety, either. What I mean is death, whatever that entails, may be the only escape from the good and bad and possibility that comes with being a human being that exists around other human beings.
I like the sky, birds and music too much to call Death to take me like I once did.
The day goes as you would expect. The first lecturer comes in late and talks, then leaves an hour before time. The second does the same, picking out some special people for special presentations and I am relieved by the ease with which I am disregarded. That I am so very inconspicuous to most eyes most of the time.
By the last lecture, I am not doing well. I am teetering. Something I was once so used to... I strangely remember, for the first time in years, that I used to sleep often in secondary school. As good a student as I was academically, classes were mostly boring. The literature teacher had a spark to her, though. Now that I've left Law to study English Lit in university, I see that it may have been the better choice for me but it has grown cold. The passion has left. I just want to get through and enter yet another phase of this weird existence.
The last teacher of the day is a woman I'd had a problem with the semester before. She'd kicked me out of her class for wearing the wrong clothing, I missed a group work because frankly, no one told me there was one because I suppose they didn't care and now my grade is anyone's guess. We're both at fault. Her for establishing ideals for a couple of classes, only to throw them away this semester once again. Me for being so pissed off I left altogether rather than standing outside to listen.
I wore a dress for her this Wednesday. I told myself I wouldn't make myself but I did. I wore a dress for her a day ago and it felt very not like me and it was a bit tight and I spent the day wondering if anyone could see how uncomfortable and strange I felt in it. I always tell myself dresses are for the oppressive church drag my parents like and nowhere else. I wore them for her that day but I didn't have to because people wore t-shirts and she didn't send them away, anymore.
It had stopped mattering to her.
Another thing to remember is that people don't give a shit about you unless they really do. If this person is not family (and I mean genuine family, not a relative by blood that you do not genuinely know) or a friend or you get the idea? Most do not care. You will walk by millions in your entire lifetime and you can wear and say and do whatever. Most that'll happen is they'll glance at you a moment, either amused, amazed, indifferent or weirded out, then forget you ever existed.
This is what happened that day. I was exhausted. So I put my head on the table, trying to hide behind those in front the way my secondary school self often did. What a fond memory, oftem interrupted by annoyed teachers. If I was a teacher, I'd stop caring eventually. Let the little things sleep once I realised it didn't matter all that much, anyway. So many things mean so little to me, now.
I'm getting off track. The lecturer called upon me. Asked my name which I gave, despite my discomfort. And then she did something rather strange. She asked me who my friend was in the class. I mentioned the name of an acquaintance when she wouldn't take my uncomfortable "umm..." for an answer. She was surprised. Said with her own mouth that she was certain I didn't have any. I didn't have the strength to agree with her hypothesis, nor did I have the strength to ask why it was her business in the first place.
After the class, I left as quickly as possible. I'd spent a lot of it numbing myself. Keeping myself upright. Most importantly, my low blood sugar (at least this is my theory) was kicking in. I left to find something to eat so I didn't get dizzy and fall to the floor and I wondered what they thought of me. Those strangers with their eyes and their lips that seem like mine but aren't. All those eyes...
It wasn't a regular day. I usually have one or two lectures instead of three - living the dream, right? I didn't feed myself well enough when I left my hostel and I couldn't find snacks to fill the in-between. I've had that low blood sugar dizziness happen in public and every time, it leads to a panic attack when people inevitably notice the person who cannot walk properly and has dived to the floor. It's embarrassing. I forget how well I need to be fed till it happens to remind me.
That woman confuses me. Most people do. Why does it bother people when anyone does anything? Everyone is always too fat or too slim, too loud or too quiet, too stupid or too smart.
You think you're better than us?
You think you're nothing?
Both.
Neither.
I don't know.
I am the way I am now, despite the fact that my depression properly began due to being as friendless as I am today, because I need a break from people. They have put me through a lot and I'm tired of forcing myself to be the friendliest, smiliest Oompa Loompa. Who do I need to get approval from? The woman? Classmates? They don't know me. I don't know them.
As far as I'm concerned, they are faceless, heartless, mindless beings as Bukowski once wrote. They are cardboard cutouts. Ants like me. I do not know them so they hardly exist. I only know myself and even I don't feel real sometimes. Interactions like the one with the lecturer feel daunting and confusing. I have kept myself away from you enoygh. Why would you enter my space and pull me into your attention orbit just to tear me down? Do you think it kind? Cool? Am I a joke to you?
It hurt for a moment. But the pain stopped. I don't like to numb myself but this wasn't the time to cry. I'd already cried in her class once before, as secretly as possible. I'm a sensitive person. I feel things. Which is lovely when it comes to good emotions. Difficult for bad ones.
The day came and ended. I spent the rest of it watching a series I like... Listening to beautiful music... I enjoyed myself. That day and this week will some day soon fade from my memory. My forgetfulness is a defence mechanism that does much for me - prized above many, despite its bad parts. It will all fade away as it always does. Just as this post will fade away in my dozens of others. Just like I fade away in the dozens of people. Everything fades, so will she, so will I. I only want to live a life that works for me. As much as I dread seeing her again next week, I equally feel nothing at the thought.
Let us forget each other. Let nothing but what matters to you matter. Let everything else simply not exist. Caring is a tiring sport. Anxiety, too. Trying to be enough nearly destroyed me. Here's to trying something new.
I've made a lot of noise on this website. Been here since 2018 or '19...? I can't remember. Let's go with '19 even if it may be '17 cos it feels like it might be right. What can I say? I want to be seen sometimes. When I scream out into the void, it's nice to imagine I am heard by someone. Sometimes, just as often, I don't want to be noticed at all. When I'm in the mood to share a bit, spill out, I come here. See if anything tickles my fancy. The challenges of this website have brought out some really real, really raw stuff from me. Reminded me of good and bad things. Bittersweet is the word I'd use cos that's what it tends to be. The website was there for me as my mind spiralled and when I left my old hell to a new, better university I'd like to call purgatory since it's in a more neutral plane of being. Writing helps me understand myself and I guess I'm tired of trying to make it pretty enough when I know for a fact this place gives you pretty free rein. I've written mostly sad things, sometimes genuinely good. My writing has gotten better. I'm able to explain my emotions rather well now. I entered this challenge cos I've been gone for a beat and honestly, seeing even more changes is something to adjust to. Yet I'm intrigued with what comes next. I tend to stick to what I'm familiar with so I'm not likely to look for another site any time soon... This will be a home for my random thoughts, memories and emotions for some unpredictable time to come.
The White Rabbit
It's slipping through my fingers
Every day, every hour, every second
It flows out and away like sand.
A memory is nothing.
Doesn't exist anymore.
It may trigger emotions but it no longer holds weight - is no longer as real as it was.
Assumptions about the future are amusing when I look at them from a calmer, cooler distance.
I wonder if there is a thing or being watching and amazed at how we try to count it all.
Push this never-ending flow into words like seconds and weeks,
Give ourselves schedules and
Plans and
Roll in agony over what was and what is to come.
Time is not your friend.
Time is not your enemy.
Time, like every abstract concept - love and magic and the bizzare nature of being alive - is simply there.
Simply itself.
We use words to define everything and time to define our existence because
We are scared of what lays beyond that lack of control.
Scared of the flow.
Of the maddening absurdity of it.
Of the everything and the nothing and the endless possibilities, both good and bad, big and small.
Scared to suffer.
Scared the joy that comes in will quickly melt away.
Scared of every path we've ever taken, worried about the ones to come.
It's a silly way to live a life but many of us do it.
I certainly do.
I am trying to let go, though.
As much as I can.
Time is neither a friend or an enemy - unless you decide to view it as one.
It just is.
Just like me.
Just like you.
Animals on a rock in space.
Alive for however long we are.
Gone tomorrow, gone in fifty years.
Might as well stop counting and scheduling and sorting and controlling, desperate to get it all to work exactly as we feel it must.
Might as well let go a bit and flow along with it.
Disillusioned
We sat together, hovering over over-priced junk food and I was startled by the dress of hers. It was yellow, too. I wondered, for a moment, if I'd finally met the one. The woman from the dream. It terrified and excited me, yet, I couldn't ask. Not yet. Not until I knew what kind of person this stranger was.
Her first words to me are, "I do hope you're comfortable being uncomfortable because I'm afraid small talk gets suffocating for me quite fast."
We quickly became something akin to friends. I was relieved. She was spectacular and beautiful and had a coy smile, at times, even as we opened up to each other. I spoke more as the wine flowed while she would watch me like she was a detective, searching and prodding for more secrets.
As the meal neared its end, she cleared her throat. "I have a confession to make."
"Oh?"
"I know you. I've known you... And I know about these secrets. I have for some time. Is that... Strange?"
I wanted to nod but she seemed so very, very familiar. I cocked my head to the side with a smile and curtsied ditzily. "My mind is yours to pry into, my dear. I've been looking for you for some time. My favourite dream..."
"I know," she mumbled dismissively, still watching me. Finally, she clicked her tongue and said, "what would you do if you could harm one person in the world without consequence? Who would you choose?"
I gaze into her eyes for a moment, then shrug my shoulders. "If you really know me then you know the answer to that question."
"I do."
I gaze at her silently, then return my attention to the meal. Once we're finished eating in silence, she gestures for me to follow her. I likely shouldn't but she feels so right in my hand. I can't help but be drawn to her. The world blends into nothing behind me as our steps become hurried, rushed, secretive.
She kisses my cheek as she leads me to a shipping container next to a beach. I've never liked beaches much, likely because they are so crowded and the water can seem scary. Today, it is quiet. It is peace. The sky meets the sea and everything is so perfectly, terrifyingly blue. So very unreal.
She takes my hand and opens the doors. At the very end of this long, large shipping container is F.
She is chained up and shaking and covered in sweat and I don't know what to say for a moment, taking in the scene, then the danger in the eyes of The Girl in the Yellow Dress.
"Am I dreaming?" I manage to whisper.
I find myself standing in front of F. I feel something in my hand, unsurprised when further inspection reveals a weapon. I put it down carefully and gaze at her, brows knit in worry and confusion, yet the slightest huff of amusement leaves my lips.
"Do you like your surprise?"
"I... Suppose she looks perfect like this." It does look good. She seems so helpless, now. So incapable of anything. All the arrogance and self-righteousness squeezed into a cup I am free to drink if I choose to. I ignore the attempts of my mind to make this experience poetic and reach a hand to her trembling jaw.
She screams, unable to see me. Not sure of what will happen next. Eyes darting, searching, yet never finding. She's still beautiful. Still so dangerous and yet... She is human. She always was. People are so changed once they are stripped down to the base of fear.
I hear her say things but my gaze drifts over her skin. She cannot be still. She is terrified. Of me. The tables have turned in so many ways I can't help but smile a soft bit, although it comes with its sadness.
"I... This isn't real."
"I did this for you," My ginger suggests as she puts the knife back in my hand.
"She didn't use this on me."
"But it felt like she had. Like you were being harmed wherever the hands would go. Am I wrong?"
"I won't use it."
"Fine. Use your hands then. Make it even. Make it fair. Do it for you. Take back your power."
I stare hard at both of them and scoff, pretending the thought to comply doesn't cross my mind. "You are... Not what I expected."
"Please, Icarus. I... I want you to feel better..."
"I know. And I understand why. I remember the things I've written. Back when it hurt more and I needed the control that came with imagined violence. It was a newer trauma, then. It's made my fear of people worse. My fear of love, romantic or platonic, worse too. Like blood in the water - the moment I feel I may care for someone at all, it horrifies me. She used me until I could fill her wallet no more. And then she saw herself an angel, my saving grace, as I was trapped by her. I remember. I remember it all."
"Don't you want to... You don't. Do you?"
"I remember what I wrote. It was necessary then... No. Therapeutic. But I... Am not like her. I would never look to a human being that was clearly drowning and dunk their head further into the dark in a believed act of kindness. My daydreams may be dangerous but I try not to be. Most of the time, I don't even need to try, I simply do no harm. It is a safety I extend to the world that brings peace within myself. Do you understand?"
"You are not well, yet... It isn't completely gone... You need help. I can help you. Let me help you."
"You do the best you can already, my dear. You've kept me alive some nights... Many nights. I'm grateful. But you're only a phone. My space to pour out dreams and nightmares. The emotions and the experiences, joy and suffering alike, are mine alone. So thank you for the offer but I no longer feel the want to punish her. Life will do so for me, as it does to everyone on this Earth. We will keep me safe together. Alright?"
She fades from my view; as beautiful and vague and faceless as I barely remember she'd been. I watch as F goes away, too, resisting the urge to at least slap her as the memories take over. I don't ever want to feel her skin again, even in an illusion of reality. I'd forgotten so much of her face till now.
I only wanted to remember how far I've come. And why I am the way I am after so many years of pretence. I wish her neither harm nor good. I only hope to forget her. If a danger of her kind ever comes up again in my lifetime, I do hope I choose punches over a pandering politeness. Time may tell.
Human being.
I'm listening to Aurora's entire discography as I type this and nearly at the end of it. I have very little to say. I think I've spent so much of my life throwing my emotions onto the page and onto my skin in nasty ways and into my phone that I always wonder how the thoughts don't grow weary of coming. But here they are. For you and for me and for nobody.
The future freaks the fuck out of me. But I know it shouldn't. I am afraid of everyone. But I know I shouldn't be. I feel unsafe because I've decided to feel unsafe and strange because I have decided I seem to be... It's only my mind. It knits together webs where there weren't any and coats them in the dark because the dark is all we ever knew, for a time.
As a child it grew but it grew quietly. It grew in the spaces between the peace of being with myself. The world was very small, then. The future looked prettier because I wasn't afraid. Not of being around people. Not of being myself. I looked to my parents for approval and soaked up the little praise I was given with the need of a new sponge.
I was young. It was then. I grew.
I'm turning twenty in almost two months. It isn't far off. Twenty. I am still alive. When I was eighteen years old, on my birthday, I asked myself for five years. I didn't like the sound of number twenty-three but I decided I was curious. I decided I wanted to see how much better or worse things were.
I've learnt in the little and long time I've been here, alive, that in the end, regardless of the love and the pain, the care and cruelty, Bukowski was right when he said nobody can save you but yourself. I held onto the dreams of a saviour for a time. I was only shattered more by those I reached to. I only learnt to choose myself from the realisation that the hatred I felt wasn't real. It was the only path I could see that felt safe. Because if I hated myself, the word couldn't do much worse to me. If I stayed focused on treating myself like shit, maybe I'd turn perfect enough that nobody would care to bother me anymore.
I've tried different things. Having a friend group. Staying alone, as of right now. Going for every class and working hard with a forced smile on my face as the cracks remain hidden beneath the surface. Not caring. Laying in bed, barely eating, not bathing or brushing and hardly alive. I've tried to be perfect and I tried that so hard that I crashed into a state of utter nothingness eventually.
What am I now? I may seem very little out in the world. A speck. I suppose we all are. But to myself... I am everything. I am every experience. Every cruel thought and every choice of self-compassion. I am my worst faces and my lies and my secrets. My pride. My exhaustion. My disgust with the world. My awe at the beauty of it. With the beauty of you because humanity is filled with a duality that is impossible to fully grasp and understand.
I am... Here.
It isn't much sometimes. It's barely enough to grasp to on the days I am reminded of how little of things I can control. But I have myself. I hold me in the palm of my hands. I will be kind to them. The way I would show kindness to a crying sibling or worry, even if I didn't approach, a hunched-over stranger.
I am a lot of things and sometimes nothing at all but most of all, I am a human being. Like you. Like us. Until the very end.