Night Time.
I had the dream again. I thought I was past this, that it was all behind me. I don’t even know what triggered it but then again I never do. I think the part that I hate the most is that it’s nothing like in the movies. There was no cold sweat or the heavy breathing, nor did I get an epiphany from it. Nothing was so dramatic, I simply woke up and my heart began to race. I spent the first ten minutes reminding myself that it was all a dream. That nothing that played out in my mind was real even if it didn’t feel that way.
It’s usually the eyes that haunt me long after I’ve left the dream behind. I see them when I look at someone with blue eyes and every time I close mine. Three am makes the latter harder to avoid than the former. Eleven years later and I still can’t get that image out of my head. I’m scared that it will always be a part of me. Like those little cartoon dark clouds that follow a person around, my life has become a cartoon strip.
I keep thinking that if I can just name it, own it, it won’t have this power over me anymore. If I can just place it in a box then I can pack it away and make it part of my past. The more I try to do that, to believe in that, the more I start to think that I had it all backwards. The more airtime I give it in my head, the stronger the foothold it gains. It’s too late to turn back and doubling down hasn’t worked either. All I can do now is try to get it down on paper in hopes that it will somehow help purge this darkness from inside me.
