Sunday, December 8, 2013

Bad Dreams

                I don’t know why I’m writing this. There used to be a time when the only way for me to stay sane was to write out my feelings, get them all out on paper so they wouldn’t bottle up inside of me and explode. I haven’t felt this… need, is the right word for it, in a long while.
                I can’t sleep. No, that’s not what I mean. I can’t sleep at night. I’m plagued by feelings of anxiety and fear. Mostly fear. This is not anything that I have had to deal with before. When my roommate is home, it’s not as bad. Some nights I still feel like there is a darkness around the edge of my bedroom, creeping closer to me every time I close my eyes. But when there is another person sleeping next to me, it is easier to quell the terror. Easier to pull the blankets over my head like I did when I was little, like a magical shield to protect me from what I know is only in my mind.
                It’s when my roommate is away, that I realize the depths of my… problem. She spends each weekend at her boyfriends. He lives about 20 minutes away and they aren’t used to being apart for such long periods of time. The weekends are their reprieve, and my Hell. 
                Alone in that room, for it is just that room that frightens me these days, I revert to the little girl in an old scary house who saw skeletons in her closet and monsters behind the shower curtain. I hear things in the shadows. I see things flittering around in the dark. I know these things are not real. I know that they are only in my mind. I’ve felt the real things, seen it, experience that fear. There is nothing in my home for me to fear. Not anymore. But alone in that room… it doesn’t matter. My fear flies in the face of all logic and too often, I find myself in tears, hugging myself for comfort.
                I don’t know what is happening to me.
                It’s Sunday night. My roommate might come home tonight, or maybe she won’t. I spend my nights alone in the living room. Currently I’m welcomed by the warm light of the mini Christmas tree on our TV stand that doesn’t have a TV. It’s stupid, but I feel like I have nothing to worry about as long as those lights are on. I feel safe here on this couch.
                Last night, around six am, I decided to go to sleep. The sun would be up soon, the Christmas lights were all on inside and outside the house. I was not afraid. There was nothing to be afraid of. I took out my contacts, turned off my lamp, and settled into the cool pillows and blankets for the night. I was so tired.
                Suddenly I was jostled awake by a sound coming from the corner of my room by the bookshelf. The sun hadn’t risen yet and without my contacts all I could see were dark splotches of shapes here and there, most of them familiar. I couldn’t immediately recall what woke me up. Just that it had been a sound. Like a crack or a snap of some kind, quick and quiet. My heart pounded, but I laughed at myself. This old house settles. It creaks and groans, the icicles outside sometimes fall and shatter on the concrete below. There was nothing to be afraid of. So I snuggled back into my comforter and closed my eyes. It was a pretense at this point, but one that I was determined to keep up.
                It was hardly a moment later when I heard the sound again. Two raps this time, exactly in a row, and closer to me in the darkness. My eyes flew open, but I did not move. I could see the bookshelf from where I lay still. A basket of clean clothes that I hadn’t put away yet lay on the carpet next to my bed. A few items of clothing were strewn about. Mostly socks.
                My heart was going wild. My breathing was ragged, but my mind was still my own. It’s just the house! Every inch of this floor creaks when you walk. The temperature is dropping like crazy outside, it must have some effect on the wood inside the house. There is nothing in the world to be afraid of.
                I waited in the dark, eyes wide, ears straining, for an amount of time that I couldn’t tell you. Forty seconds? Five minutes? Ten? I heard nothing. The sound was not repeated. I sighed to myself, groaning internally at my own paranoia, and closed my eyes. My imagination called up images of people standing over me, their faces in the darkness. These were nothing unusual. I had grown accustomed to such visions. I could ignore them. For the most part.
                The moment my muscles finally relaxed, the moment my heart began to calm, there it was again. Three raps this time. I heard them as if they were at my side, waiting next to my bed for me to hear.
                I sat up instantly and dove for the lamp.
                “Fine!” I shouted to the empty room which was now bathed in a pleasant orange glow. “Fine I won’t sleep! You win!”
                I checked my phone. It was six forty two. The sun was supposed to rise at seven twenty eight. I could wait that long. I had no choice.
                I waited in my room, fighting tired eyes, refusing to relax until the tan curtains covering my windows began to shine a light blue. I was exhausted, but I wasn’t allowed to sleep. In my delirium, I imagined that there was something there in the darkness that delighted in my torture. It would never let me rest as long as I was alone, as long as the sun was down.
                At seven thirty I sighed. I pulled my phone to me once more and turned on some music so that I could sleep. And sleep I did.
               
                This is my life these days. When I am alone, I do not sleep at night. I can’t. I stay up until the sun rises, and then it is safe. Then I can have peace.
                It’s in my head. There is nothing in my house. Everything that was here before is gone now. It all left. We took care of it! But even when I do sleep I have nightmares. In my dreams it’s all come back. In my dreams I’m stuck in this home again, tormented by something that never was human. Something evil.
                I thought that I was going to die in this house. I couldn’t stay, but I couldn’t leave either. I had nowhere to go. There was nothing I could do. I was powerless and afraid. I had my roommate, but she wasn’t scared. She was angry. Whenever things would move, whenever we would hear the whispers or see faces in the mirror that weren’t ours, she got pissed. She would shout and scream and curse at the house and whatever darkness it held. I was afraid. Truly, deeply afraid.
                I thought that when it was all over, when our house was finally ours, the fear would stop. It hasn’t.
                I guess what prompted me to write this was an errant thought I had, sitting on this couch in front of our little Christmas tree. One of the other girls I live with here has seen me at my worst. I had an emotional breakdown in front of her when one of the things that I saw, one of my nightmares, wouldn’t go away. She couldn't see it, but I could, and it wouldn't go away. She knows that I don’t sleep at night, and she is as sympathetic as she can be in the face of something that neither of us really understand.
                She joked with me today that I was subconsciously trying to turn myself into a vampire. It was funny. We laughed about it because it’s no secret that I have a villain complex and a not so secret wish to live forever. But sitting here on the couch, with snow falling persistently outside for the third night in a row, I’ve been thinking. I have a long night ahead of me. It’s not even seven o’ clock but it has been dark outside for an hour or so. This is my life. I don’t get to live forever or be powerful and strong. I get to be human and vulnerable and afraid every night for the rest of my life. I cannot sleep in the dark when the dark things, or at least the darkness in my mind, is very much awake. I have to be alert and vigilant and ready. And alone. This house is filled with people, all asleep, but I am alone.
                Suddenly, the fifty odd years I have left seem like a very long time to be alone. I don’t think that I want to be a vampire anymore.
                I don’t know if writing this out helped at all. Maybe I’ll post this on my blog. Who knows? Maybe someone has already gone through this or someone else is going through it now. Maybe writing this will help someone else more than it did me.
                All I know is that there is a long night ahead of me.

                Goodnight everybody. Sleep well. 

Monday, October 21, 2013

Life


Is never what you expect. I’m learning every day that
Life
Means embracing things that you never would have thought possible.
Like looking into the mirror and seeing a girl with a faux hawk,
Like writing an entire novel in thirty days,
Like believing that a tree can have a name and that when the wind rustles through its branches, it’s just trying to communicate.  
My world is slowly changing around me and the more I learn, the more I realize that
Life
Is filled with things that I never believed were possible.
I’m starting to believe in the power of trees,
That my roommate can psychically feel where you’re hurting and make it better with a touch,
That maybe before Adam and Eve, the was Adam and Lilith,
That I really do see dead people,
That this world is so much more than we know.
Life…
Has me dreaming of being a bartender,
Hanging a willow branch next to my bed to give me the creativity to write,
Drinking cheap whiskey that tastes like hairspray,
And looking around every corner for the next impossible thing to believe in.
I believe.
I believe in full moons
In vampires
In time travel
In Aliens
That laughter can heal
That friendship can be the best and worst decision you ever make
That hope is all the keeps us alive.
I believe in God
I believe in voodoo
I believe in witches and zombies and fae.
I know that there are psychics
That there are empaths and mediums.
I know that all of this is nonsense.
But life…
Life
Keeps showing me the impossible every day.

Who am I to stop believing? 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

A Summer Home In Vegas


A Summer Home in Vegas

I had a home. Once. My home was filled with gumball machines and water balloon fights. There were black widows under the deck and pornography flyers in the ally behind the elementary school. During Monsoon Season we would craft little boats out of Powerpuff Girl Popsicle wrappers and Otter Pops and send them floating down the gutters that spilled over with dirty rain water. There was a secret room inside my parents closet and a sandbox out by the tall trees. My Dad mowed a maze into the tall grass in the back yard and the air shimmered with the heat.

When I met you, I remembered how it felt to walk into the cool darkness of an air conditioned house after spending an afternoon in the hot sun. I remembered learning to throw a baseball with the neighbor kids, walking home and making friends with the crossing guard. When I met you, after all this time, I felt like I had come home.

High school came and went, I worked summers in fast food joints. "Service with a smile" was something I learned to both hate and live by. I moved houses. Then schools. Then States. Then out. Home... home got lost in the shuffle somehow. Even coming home from school, going "home," it wasn't home anymore. At "home" I no longer had a room, no longer had a bed. I slept on a couch in the corner of my little sisters room while she slept in the bed that had been mine, in the clothes that I had grown out of, with the family I no longer lived with. "Home" didn't have a place for me anymore.

When we became friends it was like seeing a flat horizon, unobstructed by mountains, reaching on forever until the end of the world. I remembered blood red sunsets and palm tree shadows on asphalt that was hot even after the night had fallen. The night you chose me, forced me to be honest with myself and held me while I cried-- You brought me home again Bobby. You made a space in your life that was mine to claim. So I did.

When I think of home it is bittersweet. I think of the beautiful purple cactus in my neighbors yard that I loved to look at. One day I got too close and fell into the pretty purple flowers. I got too close. But the cactus was still beautiful.
I got too close. I should have learned from my purple cactus. But I've gone and done it again. Fallen into the beautiful flowers.

All those Sundays on the lake, floating on a big blue raft with my Father, dangling my feet in the icy water while my shoulders and cheek bones burned... those days were reflected in you. You became a part of my memories, my past. You became the older brother I would have pushed into muddy water, wrestled with in the sandbox, found eggs with in the trees months after Easter was over and done. You became my home. And now you're leaving. In a small way, you've already gone. And when you finally go I will have lost my summer home in Vegas. 

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Searching

There's something bad in the world. Something that makes people go rotten inside. Stagnant. Something that makes people decide to stop living. It makes their eyes gloss over, kills the fire and the passion. It makes them turn everything off, stop caring, stop loving, stop feeling. I've seen in over and over. I've read about it in books, watched it in movies, seen it in plays and musicals. There's something that makes people go wrong. It takes their potential and inverts it, redirects it.
I don't know what it is. I don't know why people stop living. It's here. Whatever it is. It's eating at the people that I love, making them sick with indifference. They're forgetting themselves and I don't know what to do. I just keep reading, keep watching, keep studying, hoping that somewhere in history someone found the answer. It's got to be here somewhere in my books. Maybe if I find it, if I discover the cause of this disease... maybe I can stop it. Before it claims everyone that I've ever cared about. It's nearly there already. 

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Gay Marriage on FB

Humanity frustrates me. A bit.

I want skyscrapers.
I want bullet trains and atom smashers, equations on a chalkboard and a life free of guilt.
We of the ego, the people of self who dare proclaim "I" state here and now that exaltation is ours.
Ultimate Enlightenment comes from the continued use and constant improvement of the mind. Heaven is finding those on earth who feel the same.  

Monday, December 24, 2012

Merry Christmas Ryan

Why haven't you left?
I can't understand it.
As we've grown, we've parted and strayed from home, you only seem to love me more. How is it possible?
When oceans of people have faded away before you, crashing into my life and disappearing back into the sea just as quickly... Here you stand.
You alone have remained constant.
You alone have remained.
I love you for it.
I don't need their company. I don't need their love. Their hate will suffice, will do just fine.
But you...
You've thrown a wrench into everything I've known here. Into all the little plans I've made. You skipped the clouds gliding past and became a star. One that I can see and love every night, no matter the distance between us.
I don't understand it.
You know me.
I've given you my rose because you alone understand what it means. You alone understand that I expect to be alone. The rose that you've held in your hand is my permission for you to walk away. And yet you stay.
I've let you in. I can't say why or when it happened, only that it did. I love you dearly, like I've loved only a few before. But unlike before, it is without reservation. I love you wholly and completely. I love who you are and what you stand for. I love you Ryan.
You're here. I can't say why, but you care and you show it. That means so much more than the world to me. The world could never understand the two of us. We were meant for bigger things than the world can comprehend. You and I, I think, were made for the stars.