just a dream…
It was just a dream. It wasn’t real. You don’t need to worry about it. It’s never going to happen.
But then why can’t I stop shaking? Why can’t I breathe regularly? Why can’t I feel it when I’m tearing open my own skin?
I can’t get it out of my head. Running, chasing, being chased. Putting my family in danger. Hiding, trying to get away, always being found. By friends, by people I know, by people I used to see every day… and they would be mocking me, staring at me, trying to make me leave. I didn’t belong. I didn’t belong anywhere. Even the kids didn’t like me.
I was climbing, climbing trees, and even that didn’t help. They found me there. I was running, running through the woods… I love the woods… but even the woods wasn’t safe. They followed me there. They saw me. They called each other, so that they could run me down, chase me away, make me leave.
Hiding places, safe places, places I come to a lot in my dreams… they were destroyed, compromised, taken over. They were not mine anymore. Some were destroyed, or worse… made into centers of abuse and torture and dehumanization.
My family was not my family anymore. They had been changed, turned against me… I was alone.
I would hide, everywhere, anywhere, but it was never enough. I would scrape my body, cut into my skin… I would bleed, but I could not feel it. I was constantly trying to force everything down, to force the fear, the emotions down, to think logically, to figure out how to ward everyone off. I was abusing my body, getting more and more desperate, because nothing was working. Nothing was helping. Nothing was calming me down. I couldn’t feel any of it. It wasn’t enough. I had to keep going, cutting deeper. I had to find more and more things, tools, I could abuse myself with. But there wasn’t enough, there was never enough.
And then I was high, looking down, and if I jumped, I would die. It was high enough, I could get away, I could be free, I could be free. But then they were there again, chasing me, mocking me, telling me how I failed. I could hear them talking to each other, telling stories about how terrible I was. I could hear them talking to my closest friends. I could see their faces changing, from love and trust to disgust and horror. They were turned against me.
I didn’t know how to defend myself. What if the words they were saying were true? How could I deny it? How could I deny my own corrupted heart? Yes, I was selfish. Maybe I really didn’t care about other people… maybe I just wanted attention, I just cared about what people thought of me, what people could give me… maybe it was true.
I wanted to die. I wanted to reach the poison, to climb the tree, or the top of that building… I longed for a knife, a sword, a gun… anything that would end it all… but I could never get to it. Always, they came and chased me away, mocking me, laughing at me, never letting me go, never letting me be free.
And now I am awake again. It was only a dream. Just another dream. I can forget it, and it will be gone.
But then why… why am I still searching for that escape? Why am I still torturing my body, hoping to sometime feel pain, feel something, so I can calm down? Why am I still longing for a knife, a sword, a gun?
I’m curling up, in the corner of my bed, in the corner of my room, trying to make it stop, trying to shut out the mocking voices. But no matter how tightly I squeeze my body, no matter how hard I press and pound on my head, it never goes away. It never stops.
I just have to wait for it to quiet enough that I can get up and pretend it’s not there, pretend I’m fine, pretend I’m happy and calm and safe and strong…
windwhisperings 