It’s nowhere (to be) seen
It’s someone else’s dream
I took out my stupid, almost always lost key and opened the door to Lisa’s hell. The lights were on from the very moment they felt I was getting close to home. They had never done it before, no matter how hard I’ve tried, so they decided to do it now in the Ruby-something Hue theme. I was too exhausted and too in pain to notice that anyway.
I melted down on the couch, my head still aching, and I deeply wondered which was the true reason for it. Is it the heat? Is it the air? Is it the stress? Dehydration? Then I remembered, it was the thing that no one said it was: nothing. Most accurately, the nothing.
It’s been no more than ten days since I felt like I was gonna die again — like, really dying— the day that I decided this was over, my solid ice-cold queen era; the day I trusted my heart and my mind to, precisely, start the melting process in order to free myself, to kick my demons out and to seek help to open the firefly jar.
Trusting wasn’t as hard as I expected. It was literally just a walk in the park after going to the happiest, warmest place I know in this gigantic city—the only place where I can truly find myself and where I can always rely for peace.
I suddenly forgot that I was dying and started to live again.
So, now that my ice is broken and it’s no longer protecting me, I’m vulnerable, I’m melting, and I’m deeply hurt again.
Even with those things, I can’t avoid the truth. Even though I was scared as shit of getting out, I hated the lack of emotions; I would melt a million times more if that meant I would feel something or if that meant that I would never go away without revealing my true feelings again. I don’t love pain, but I take it.
I sat down in what I now call The Rainforest, the favorite spot in my funhouse. Here, I could talk to my plants, lie down, listen to Misty's subtle waterfall sounds, and think and listen to my own inner speech. Now, this place was haunted by shattered memories of a happy Friday just chatting and laughing.
Felt how my heart skipped a beat, so I went outside to the balcony. Haunted again. By a year-long spell under the mandala-like thing that spins and has crystals on it that got recast with stronger, bigger magic.
Tears started streaming from my eyes, so I ran to another haunted place in search of the exchange of my tears for drops of forgetfulness. But I got them for free because the Ghost told me I would need the tears for the night. They were the dress code for that night’s show at 5 AM: unexpected melancholic rain.
— Oh, but I sure have plenty of those — I replied. He didn’t care. This ghostly gatekeeper thing just gave me the drops with an extra touch. It’s like he knew what I needed; he knew I didn’t need to pretend I wasn’t grieving enough to let the tears flow, and he was right. I just didn’t want it to show hours later at work.
So I cried my heart out anyway. I cried until the pain was so intense I had to put it to sleep. The pain was real; it spread from my heart to my brain, and from there, it started to invade my entire body and my soul. Then it just went to sleep, and I followed it to Morpheus' arms.
She woke up feeling truly ethereal; she knew she was dreaming before but forgot what it was. Loud noises were the guilty ones who woke her up, and maybe the annoying itch from a starving mosquito.
She scratched her leg, then her arm, then she was itchy in every single spot of her body, so she went to the rainforest to recover her stand-by dreams.
The loop switches sides.
She woke up feeling truly ethereal; she knew she was dreaming before but forgot what it was. Loud noises were the guilty ones who woke her up, and maybe the annoying itch from a starving mosquito.
She scratched her leg, then her arm, then she was itchy in every single spot of her body, so she went to the bedroom to recover her stand-by dreams.
The loop switches sides.
She woke up feeling truly ethereal; she knew she was dreaming before but forgot what it was. Loud noises were the guilty ones who woke her up, and maybe the annoying itch from a starving mosquito.
This time, she breaks the cycle by going back to the rainforest to realize the noise was coming from outside; it was, in fact, a show, an unexpected morning storm that looked so melancholic and beautiful while contemplating it.
The ghost was right.
The tears were needed.
She wished her world was as beautiful as just watching the rain while chasing mosquitoes. She wished for strength, to be brave, to be better.
The thing that I like to call the Phoenix Down did wonders that night; I bless it in its entirety. I opened my eyes to the morning light, which was still covered by half-blackout curtains, so I couldn’t see the sky at first.
One of the things I despise when I’m in sad fields is that I don’t always remember what’s happening at the moment. Then I do, and it depends on what it is and the way I’ll be spending my day. So, I stayed in bed while relaunching. My eyes were extremely in pain, and when I asked myself what had happened, I remembered the day before.
A total breakage of a heart.
It took me hours, if not almost the entire work shift, to know what was real and what wasn’t real from my dream: the protective ghost wasn’t here, so it was not real; the streets were still wet, so the rain was real; the rainforest was dry, not even with a turned on Misty — who was, in fact, telling me to fill her again on my phone, so my relax session wasn’t real.
But the mirror never lies, and the pain and sadness in my face were real, so the worst part of the story was also real. I’m sure that if I had a Robx with a functional Feeling Tracker, they would be worried about this blackout of mine, but I did my best again.
I smiled, took a deep breath, and reminded myself of what I’ve been learning about love, letting go, and living in the “now,” with the things that are real, not in a future that I don’t even know or a past that is done.
Like I said before, I’ve been living in peace with most of my problems. And I’m totally committed to moving on with the things I left on hold for this moment in a very “whatever happens, happens” kind of way. It’s not like I’m trying to be a fake happy clown, but even after all this time of tears, I believe in real things. Real moments that will never go away, real feelings that could or could not disappear, real actions to always improve.
Years ago, while we were in the middle of an unfair fight for… perhaps unfair stuff, a jerky ex-boyfriend told me from the deepest place of his heart that no matter how big, numerous, and awesome the good things are, they will always be taken over by one bad thing.
That was his motto, it seems. Because whenever I think of him, whenever I try to describe him in my mind, he is right: no matter how talented, creative, or clever things he did, if one person disliked them, he would break into pieces. But as I was the one to put those pieces back in their place quite often, I realized that he was not right.
His mind was always tricking him into thinking that because he needed to feel fulfilled in instant rewards. But the truth is that our world doesn’t work like that. If a cup breaks, it doesn’t mean the other ones will break as well, and you can even find a way to fix the cup.
Humans are not objects, though. We can’t throw away our minds just because they feel broken. I wish we could transfer memories to new ones sometimes, just keeping what we need, but even the uncomfortable is needed to grow up and learn.
The problem is that if you stay focused on what’s broken, you’ll never figure out the truth: you could be wasting good things and loving people in your life.
So, that Wednesday morning, I refused to focus on pain or uncertainty, to smile in the name of what is real: I feel this way because I cared, gave the best I could, and tried my best to heal and keep myself strong to bloom the seeds I left in my heart.
✖️
