Nic Narrates

I would give up being able to remember my dreams each night to forget ones like last night’s. My dreams are lucid, controlled, memorable. My nightmares are just as in-hand, though in them I’m trapped- aware that I’m dreaming, unable to change a thing, unable to wake myself up. When I do, I’m panicked, crying, broken. It’s just a dream, right?

There is so much good, so much to be happy and hopeful about these days. Yet, my mind still takes me back and downward to a time that’s ingrained in my very pores. There’s no separating myself from what has been, from who I have been, and what I used to know.

In the cold, disorienting, night time quiet, those memories haunt me, scream at me, claw at my hair and face, tear at my chemise, drench me in cold sweat, smack me awake. The echoes of words thoughtlessly flung, the muted sounds of our conflicts, the look in his eyes, in mine: it’s visceral.

All was not as it is now. There didn’t used to be this all-encompassing hug that I wake up to each day and go to sleep with each night. There didn’t used to be these friends, nor their smiles and laughter and care. There didn’t used to be the parents that I know now. Didn’t used to be this peace I’ve found within myself.

Before, there were such countless dark hours. Sometimes, they find me still. But for once, more often than not…there’s light.

Filed under: a thing of beauty, break ups suck more, card games hurt my feelings, depression, family matters, in memory, wakefulness, work in progress by Nic