Little Nightmares.
I had opened my mouth to speak — that was when she
struck with a cobra’s sly impetus.
"I MISSED YOU",
"I missed you..."
Her fingers were a conflicting alternation from her voice - gentle at first, caressing the waning sillhoutte of my visage — then I felt. They coiled around teeth with a corrosive touch that turned them bare and brittle; she then began tugging away at each of them — starting from the very front two. I remember drooling like a madman halfway into the torture, a mouth pooling with blood.
Inebriation inhibited my reception of pain —but the warmth the couplet rivulets of blood streaming down my mouth radiated could almost be called comforting. As if I willingly volunteered to get them pulled, to be in this appalling state of psychosis.
Once she pried out the final tooth, I awoke in a panic.
Lord, the pain… I had to press my finger against my teeth while writing this just to feel a smidgen of the agony. It was as if a stray football had jetted straight into my teeth , toothy detritus shards flying out as I take a sharp jolt back. I ran a finger along them: but even that hurt! I nearly hurled out swears to the sun! Those aches continued for almost an hour!
And yet, this was a pearl in the harbor, an unpleasant experience garnishing some food for thought - mostly in the sought of meaning behind the dream; if there had been any subliminal significance behind it.
Our conscience is an intrinsically artistic pallette of intricate interpretations of our lives, illustrated by the subconscious in REM. In a way, it can be your brain's way of descrying into the future by analyzing your current situation and portraying them in a sort of picturesque nuance - when dreams turn to nightmares, they often entail more than what meets the eye.
Analogous to their antithesis, it's like life’s way of sitting you down at that business table, aggressively pointing at the lower-most data point indicative of the most recent sales, and telling you, “If you keep this up, we’ll be packing our bags and closin' down business!” — change is needed urgently, lest the consequences be immediate, and, at times, devastating.
I was in a 6 year relationship - on and off. She was my heart. The core of my soul. But somewhere along the line, juggling trying to pass senior year with flying colors, helping people with peer-specific recommendation letters and personal essays, and becoming more proactive in my community, simply became a burdensome, at times insurmountable task that required my full attention. In other words, having to take a few steps back from her. Despite all the memories, all the promises in hopes of a future together - behind closed doors, she initiated things with another man. This dream had occurred but a week prior to this discovery, encased behind a white screen and blurred lies...
That was when it occurred to me.
This was no nightmare. It was a blessing in disguise.
It was an interpretation of my current vulnerability to the precepts of deception. It was my conscience telling me to introspect, to dive deep in the pool of my problems, and not run as it undulates.
I needed to stop worrying about the pain of loss and start thinking about the joy of gain. Not every pebble you throw will skip, so don’t drown in the thought : don’t overthink, just do. She needed to be displaced out of my life entirely. Had I remained, I would have lived an absentmindedly cyclical life of complacency, a thought that rattles my inner core with anxiety, and, at the time, a sort of cynicism. I am already prone to sloth and procrastination: a work in progress. Remaining in that relationship would have only manipulated me into wanting to re-tie an untied bond, and kept me entangled in a need for constant closure.
And yet, the entire situation also made me realize something else: had I not been bogged down by the fears of loss and doubts of depreciation, I wouldn’t have honed my grievances into passion, and passion to art.
Out in the multiverse, there's a version of me who never put pen to paper, and never found his dream.
That could've been me.