Dreamlike

This is a tale about something everybody goes through. Or now, after experiencing it myself, I will say everyone should go through a phase like this.

I am not normal. I have awkward dreams. Dreams which sometimes talk to me. This time, this dream, it impacted me so deeply I wanna pen it down.

I knew a guy; or I thought I knew. He never really knew me for sure. Because he always used to conclude about my character for things I never did. Ignored me for every small little misunderstanding instead of conversing. Or maybe he just disregarded me for fun. I don't know. And maybe I never even cared.

Just like every other time, he judged me wrong, ignored me and met me after exactly one month of talking. I did miss him, but this time I saved that part of me which always used to die trying to prove my innocence. It was a subtle encounter. I didn't pay any heed to his presence and neither did he. We pretended things were completely normal, which really isn't the case. So I came back home early, smoked one usual, got a little too high because I was sleep deprived and went straight to bed. It's when the daymare came into being.

Him and I lived in a village. Cheerful. With no stress, no traumas. No pain, no intoxications. No study, no pressure. Selling utensils to fill our stomachs. Everyday was full of love, romance and abyssal chats. It sounds so perfect. It was.

One day, while selling our handmade utensils, we sneaked out to hold each other. I was happy, holding him in my arms. Kissing.

That is when suddenly something slapped me on my face. And I woke up. My hands, positioned in the same exact way I held him; lips, still puckered. And my eyes, filled with tears of unrevealed genesis. I turned around, crying. The only way to control my emotions was to look for another cigarette. So I stood up. I looked everywhere in my room but there were no cigarettes, no weed, no alcohol. That certainly doesn't sound like my room. It can't be. I shrieked in pain. Water flowed from my eyes like blood from a fresh incised wound. I could have bled to death. I covered my tiny face in my hands, sobbing. And that's when I hear it. Another cry, coming from the other side of my room. I pulled myself together to acknowledge its origin. There I saw her, crying on the floor of my bedroom. Another me.

I grew white. White as a cloud on a sunny day. I didn't know whether to console her or to run to a psychiatrist, good thing I was posted in the same department as a medical student. But my hand reached to her, looking for a look, an identity. I nudged her shoulder, trying to check out. She looked at me in no time. As if she was expecting it, or maybe compelling me to do it. I gasped taking a few steps back. Eyes wide open, still stuck on her. Her face.

She was me. I was her.

Within seconds she was on her foot, sniffing and walking towards me. With each step, I felt my heart beating faster. It was beating so fast I couldn't feel my pulse. There was no blood in my vessels.

She put her hands on my shoulder.

" Why did he judge me after everything I did for him?" She sniffed. "I was trying to love him, wouldn't you agree? I was trying so hard even after getting hurt and ignored so many times. But he failed me, every damn time. Distanced me, made me hate him."

I couldn't agree more. She was indeed me. I was still scared, but I wanted to cry, hugging her. Maybe complain about those I don't like. Complaining to yourself is always the best, even if it's a little spooky. Otherwise normally I cannot do it in someone else's presence. Anyone alive. Demons might make me feel at home around them. One part of me also wants to touch it to relieve myself that it isn't a hallucination.

"I share your pain, you know. It hurts hating someone you have a soft spot for in your heart. We are going through the same phase. But I assure you it will fade away."

The other me turned towards me. I expected her to say something that might console me. She did the entire opposite instead.

"You keep saying this to yourself, don't you?" I took a step back. "You stupid, poor creature! I hear your loneliness everyday and I am sick of you." She paused for a moment and started giggling. It froze my inner organs when her chortle slowly turned into a maniacal, evil laugh. Her voice changed from that of a sweet, cheerfully depressed girl to something fiend. Her voice made my heart come out of my mouth to gain some heat, only to go back inside my chest where it felt safe.

She stared at me until my body turned red again from white. Her eyes didn't seem to be wanting to hurt me. They were fiercely red, but in pain, as mine. Or maybe she was angry at me. I totally understand it though, I was angry at myself too.

She pulled her tongue out to speak. But before she said something, I rushed towards the opposite wall and started scratching it.

"Somebody get me out please! This can't be true. You can't be true." I shrieked in fear. "I don't want to talk about it. I do the things I do. And this time I am innocent as Johnny Depp. I didn't do the stuff people think I did. So stop blaming me for it. I didn't do it." I was covered in sweat. I would have felt less water on my body while bathing. With a blink of an eye, she was standing right in front of me. I screamed, again. This time with all the throat that I have left.

"You are a stupid girl. You look for ways to harm yourself even though you don't want to. You look for comfort in people who are made to use you. Your feelings. You say you have a wall around your heart, but it's been breached several times by people you don't even know, can you see that? Well I can, because I am you."

I listened to her, holding my breath. Was this my conscious talking to me? Are these the facts that I had known for years, but ignored? Why would a demon care about me? It felt like Count Dracula was consolidating me to feed on my luscious blood later, free of stress, regrets and sorrow.

"Are you even listening?" she sighed.

I nodded.

"Look at you now? Are you happy? Satisfied? Pretending to move on? You didn't even take the first step, love. No matter how much you try to kill that girl, she will always be there inside you hoping to get the things out of her reach."

She smirked. Laughed. Her demonic maniacal laugh was killing me from the inside. I was no longer feeling cold. There was a heat wave of rage growing inside my heart.

"Does she think she has all the answers to everything I am going through? Does she know how vulnerable I was, when I met him? Does she know how hard it is for me to feel the same jeopardy and yet forget any one I made, or I thought I made a bond with?" I said to myself.

"How much pain do you think a person can take in before bursting it all out?" I asked the omniscient.

"Do you wanna know? Or would you prefer to feel?"

She grabbed me by my face and pushed me inside the wall.

It was all darkness. I couldn't breathe. My clothes were getting wet. I wanted someone to pull me out of this shadowy world. I tried to choke myself, hoping it would help me respire.

That's when I actually woke up. Thrown out of my own bed. Covered in sweat. My hands, still holding my neck. I stood up. Took some deep breaths. I couldn't make out what happened at first. I tried to reminisce about how I fell from my bed. Was it a dream? Or everything happened for real. Is it possible for the demon to doppelganger me, haunt me and scare me in my dreams?

I wasn't qualified enough to understand what just came about. So I decided to ignore it. Consider it as a bad dream. A dream I might never forget.

All my trust issues came over me, making me suspicious. What if I have accidentally entered another dream? A dream within a dream within a dream. I was dream hopping. I wasn't high anymore. So I looked for stuff in my room. The cigarettes were kept where I left them. So was the alcohol. Yeah it was my room. I thought of smoking one more cigarette hoping it might help me forget this day-mare. But instead I went out to grab some fresh air, away from my room. I realised looking at sad faces of people who hurt me at some point of time will work better than something that's doing more worse than good.

What bothered me the most was the fact that the happiness, the time I was genuinely satisfied in my life, was a dream inside a dream. So far from me. So distant I can't even dream about it directly.