Dreams of Unwanted Children

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”

~Arthur Schopenhauer

“What were you in the dream? What perspective were you watching it from, I mean?”

I think I was the evening of silence. The last ice cream van in the street returning to its home. And I was at home. Something about the tinkling bells filled my heart. Always a strange form of euphoric remorse. Hard to tell apart from one another. Melancholy and joy intertwined. Some ask whether it’s possible to feel this way when you’re a child. I say it is only possible when you’re a child. Soon the bawling infant is stripped away from the world and locked within the confines of a prison whose security is tighter than Guantanamo Bay. We must keep the child within us in check. You know what they say, all criminals are unrestrained children. I happen to have passed by a prison van three or four times. With feline fury they clawed onto the small bars as if clinging on to the small bit of life they had never truly owned. It must feel this way when you grow old.

The pacing of the dream is always strangely off. Like the jarring struggle of wheels against the rails with a slow-paced train above. I could always feel my mind suspended inside the skull. My spirit always hanging by a thread. The single thread that determined my freedom and enslavement to this world. The world was always filled with structures and patterns but in the dream anything could come to life. The ground could dissolve anytime. Yet it wasn’t that way at all. The dream was simultaneously dull and dry. Just like the rest of the world.

And I was in the perpetual state of wait each time. Perhaps I was waiting for my mother to come back home. The breakfast in morning had now gone stale. The lunch was cold. By the evening tea, she was home so I was always hanging around, not saying much. Maybe that’s what I was waiting for. To be called by the name and asked about my day. But instead I played a little game in my head where I imagined not to be there at all. I was in an entirely whimsical land. Because I knew my name wouldn’t be called. Not lovingly at least. I wasn’t truly gone. I could hear the laughter of my family in the background. I didn’t know what the joke was and the voice had left my throat.

Nails dug into my skin. Someone held me a bit too tightly. But I couldn’t scream. I didn’t know what bone that stranger had to pick with me. The laughter only grew louder. Sometimes someone would be pass me by with a look of indifference and mild disdain. It wasn’t pain that I felt but constant itching. The need for reassurance, comfort and safety. But the distance between my bedroom’s door and outside world was too large to acquire any of it all.

Like the table placed between us and all the items of food. I just ate in silence because

I only know how to splutter sentiments all over the table-cloth. The man in the thick-rimmed glasses passed me but a squint. Disinterested. When it was time to go, my heart skipped a beat for a semi-second at the supposedly romantic evening. Except there was no cool breeze in the air. It was chilly and eerily quiet. I stumble multiple times but no one watches. I stumble my way back to my warm bed. But it wasn’t warm at all. It was cold and hard. And it wasn’t my bed. I had never had one.

I fell asleep reminiscing the brief, apathetic squint of the eyes. The nail stung in my bones but there was no pain. I smiled a thin smile as my body tingled with goosebumps. I thought of holding another body. Except there never was another body. There was only laughter in the hallway each night and a rushed day with no memory worth recalling. But when I woke up, I closed my eyes to memorize the brief contact I’d had. The squinting, the arch of eyebrows maybe it resembled concern. How delightful it was to be cared for. For breakfast, I’ll have the feeble yet lingering hope of another memory like this. The laughter in the hallway as the melody that would haunt my dreams at night. But the haunting was so kind. It never truly dropped me to the floor and be in this world. For I knew my name wouldn’t be called so lovingly as I hoped.