Absolutes

A metaphorical nightmare

Absolutes.
They tell me to focus on absolutes.
Truth.
Fact.
Okay. Absolutes. Facts.
One thing at a time.
Well, one, I don’t know how I got here; that’s a fact.
Crippling darkness overwhelms the cold, eerie environment I can’t find a way out of, and a single, dull lightbulb hangs from the ceiling. The light has nothing against the cold. Against the dark.
Absolutes. facts.
Emotions are my only friends. That’s an absolute, right? That’s a fact.
Fear is my closest friend; he sits in the corner of every room I enter. He is so loud that I’ve grown accustomed to his shrill and whiny screams. They settle into the depths of my mind every time they make their way out of his mouth.
Right now, he’s silent.
Strange.
Fear sits still in his corner and, through the darkness, I see a playful expression dancing across his face.
Absolutes. Facts. Come on.
I turn warily to the next corner of the room, where I see an old friend, someone I haven't seen in years.
“Hello, it’s good to see you again… finally,” Joy whispers. My eyes meet hers, and a temporary warmth travels through my body. My bones stay cold, though.
My gaze continues past her without my consent. Pressure presses against my skin as a force beyond my control pushes my rag-dolled body to the wall behind me, which presents a dimly lit, yellow hallway.
My body releases suddenly, and the crushing of my senses as my feet hit the floor nearly brings me to my knees. My body wasn’t released to Relaxation, as badly as I wish I could be.
No, Relaxation left long ago, after Stress and Tension kicked him out and wouldn’t unlock the door. Losing him was heartbreaking, but it had to happen. At least, that’s what Fear says.
Fear stays silent as I gaze down the hallway. Peeling yellow wallpaper lines the walls and the scent and sight of stains and gunk dance together in the air—pulling me in through a sick and twisted song. In front of me stands another close friend, Familiarity. He has his hand out, asking me to walk away with him. Familiarity has many names: Nostalgia, Past, Abandonment, Loss, Lie.
My favorite, however, is Nostalgia. A name that makes him feel like an old friend, someone I can trust.
Joy also remains quiet. She’s the kind of friend who needs you to choose her first, and then she’ll spend time with you. I would pursue her—I would—but she requires a lot of attention to keep her alive. She’s like a plant; she needs roots, water, sunlight, and time.
I prefer to have my garden—my circle— empty, but you have plants or weeds. I don’t make the rules.
I look back at Fear, Joy, and any other friends I will leave behind if I walk down this hallway. I’ve done it a hundred times, but this feels different. Permanent.
An empty garden is better than weeds, right?
I take the hand of Familiarity— Nostalgia— and walk with him. With the smell, the sounds, and the darkness, my body grows increasingly numb. I savor and breathe in the feeling as if the scent of it will accompany the last breath that ever filled my suffocating lungs.
I am gasping, nearly, at the freedom the numbing brings: no more pain, no more fear, no more guilt, sadness, loneliness.
Nothing.
However, just like the darkness, you will drown if you walk too far into it, and I don’t know how to step back when the numbing, the insensate, overcomes my body. So, I continue to walk hand in hand with Familiarity. I’m glad he’s here this time; I’ve had to walk down this hallway a thousand times to be able to hold his hand as I wander through the darkness that swallows us.
As I reach the end of the hallway, Familiarity leaves, and the tingling numbness rushing through my veins pulls my skin so taut that I can feel the moths begging to break through my skin. In front of me rests an old, smudged mirror covered in snot, tears, and the fingerprints of breakdowns that have nearly torn me apart.
Countless times, countless tears, countless versions of myself lying on the floor and smudged against a mirror I can barely see my reflection in anymore. Through the streaks of pain and memories, I see an image you think I'd be used to by now, but rather ignites a terror in me that reaches extremities Fear couldn’t even attempt to touch with his shrill and eerie screams. I can’t tell if time moves quickly—all at once— or slow and steady. I swear the blood drips down my skin with the speed of a drop of molasses, but my heart pounds with an urgency one could only compare to the shot of a bullet.
Someone dark—monstrous—creeps up slowly on my frozen image in the mirror. Her touch is sticky against my arms, and every inch of my body that she touches or allows her gaze to linger on begins to bend, to bruise, to bleed. I’ve met her a million times, sliced in half by her gaze, sobbed from her touch, but I can’t find a name for this specific emotion. If that’s who she is,
Or what she is.
I try to scream, I try to yell, I try to wrestle out of her grasp: I can’t give up, I can’t give up, I can’t let her take over me again. Please, please let me out. Please.
My body ignites with a fire I’ve felt before, but just like everything else, this is different.
Everything is different.
This dream is usually the kind you don’t have the strength to fight. This time, though, something told me that if I don’t fight, I won’t wake up.
So, I fight, I scream, I yell. I thrash, and I claw against her arms with enough vigor to twist our bodies around so I can see a yellow-stained wall in place of the hallway.
I’m done for.
I can’t let this be the end; I can’t. Her nails dig into me, making me bleed, but I kick her away nonetheless.
Finally, I fall free from her grasp and rush toward the mirror with immense urgency. I could go through the mirror, reach through, and find the other side—a burst of sunshine that never existed on this side of the mirror.
Like Alice and the Looking Glass, I’ll slip into another reality. I’ll be free.
Then, the sight in the mirror stops me dead in my tracks.
No,
No, no, no, no, no.
Please, no.
There in the reflection was the unconscious body of a girl I could only identify as myself.
She is 5, maybe 6 years old. Completely and utterly helpless. In a swift movement, I’m on my knees. The concrete below me is damp and cold, and the pain coursing from my fingertips to the darkest, innermost pieces of my brain is so striking it’s grown silent. Rather than screaming at me, the pain heightens every other sense to their max. The floor is so cold, and I can feel every grain of dust, and every drop of what I can only hope is hot, thick water.
The thumping of my heart deafens me, and the tingling in my fingertips paralyzes my soul. In the mirror, she returns, and with every step she takes toward that innocent little girl, a new wound appears on her arm.
One step causes a circle about half an inch deep in her arm.
Another step—a matching circle next to it.
She reaches the girl with a third and final step and carves the last stroke of a smiley face on her arm. Blood pours from the eyes and the mouth of a cartoonish gash that stares into me. I watch her limp body rise in the arms of the monster that now wears my face.
The monstrous girl has condensed into a form that matches mine perfectly; on her face, she wears the same expression of terror I'm positive can be seen on my own face. A broken piece of glass drops from one of her hands—sharp as a knife. The glass shatters as it hits the floor, and the blood of the girl mingles with the shards. She carries the child towards the darkness. I look down to find the same terrifyingly large shard of glass now held tightly in my own bleeding hand and the same bloody smile staring back at me from my other arm.
I drop the shard gently and curl into myself. The floor, still as strikingly cold and wet, does little to cradle my broken and shaking body. A sob escapes my lips with a brokenness I have felt for years but could never get out, like a sacrifice to something much more powerful than I could ever be.
I am pouring out.
I am gone. Fading.
This is it.
After hours, the first and last touch of warmth surrounds my body. I relax into it as it lifts me up and away. Away toward the rest of forever. I’m not sure what is in store for a person like me in the immense span of eternity,
But it spells like my dad.
Feels like him, too.