Frozen Dreams

I press my palms against the fogged up window, swiping them back and forth. The windows are freezing, but it is no difference, my hands are already so very cold. The heating hums, but still I'm frigid, frozen in place. The air around me seems to stop and my heartbeat quickens. Thump, thump, thump. It feels as if it is trying to escape. I can hear a scream in the distance and the glittery white snow is falling, falling, falling. It doesn’t look as beautiful now. I open my eyes. No Ani, you’re home, you’re fine, just go back upstairs and go to sleep. But I can’t, I can’t move. 

I continue to wipe the windows until they are crystal clear. It is dark outside, pitch black, but it just makes the snow stand out more. A thin layer covers the ground, barely covering the tips of the grass. 

How could something so beautiful be so deadly? Something so gentle, how could it hurt someone so bad?

My head aches, but I can’t pull my eyes away. How many years had it been since the accident? I don’t know, and honestly I don’t care, all I care about is the white dust falling from the sky. It’s stunning, but I know what it could do, or what it did do. 

The snow is falling down in heaps and my eyes are clouded with the white snow. It is so dark, so very dark. My fingers claw at the snow, but it is hardly that same powdery snow, it is hard concrete. I scream, calling for help, but don’t want to waste oxygen. I can barely breathe. I feel so dizzy. So sorry. How stupid of me. Then it goes dark. 

A single light flickers in the hallway. The darkness is peaceful, very different from the darkness that day. The tile floor is freezing, but still somehow I must’ve fallen asleep. The window is once again frosted over. I wipe my palm against the window, my fingers are pink and raw, almost burning. The ground is completely covered in what looks like a couple of inches of snow, but it still goes strong. The sun is just starting to peek over the horizon. It looks so beautiful. The world looks so beautiful. I shiver with excitement, I want to go breathe the cold air, have the white powdery snow bite my fingertips, I want to build a snowman, just like we used to as kids. Most of all I want to take out my faded skis, and ski up and down rolling mountains. But no, I can’t. Fear overrides my excitement.

The closet across the hall taunts me, I feel the urge to rip open the doors. 

“Ani, are you sure? I can put them up, frame them somehow. If that's what you’d like,” Mom had asked. 

I shook my head, “Please, just leave them, I’ll decide later,” And I had decided, I was going to throw them away. Obviously I never did, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out, the last piece of my past life. But I also couldn’t put them on display, as a reminder to myself everyday of what I could never do ever again. And so I did what I do best, lock them away in the closet, quitting completely. My dreams locked away along with it, my frozen dreams.

The snow keeps falling, heavy then light, heavy then light, then stopping all together, just to start over again. I feel broken and hurt, betrayed, by frozen water that falls from the sky. 

I run a finger up the long scar on my arm. Dark crimson blood flashes before my eyes, it seeps into the white snow, staining it. My arm throbs with unbearable pain. My whole body is numb with cold. And the beeping, the noise, the blood curdling screams, and sobs. 

I remember the day so clearly, I try not to, but I do. Stepping into a hospital gives me headaches, cuts scare me, the cold causes me to freeze up and I spend most of my time curled up in blankets, heating humming, just as it is now. I moved so that I would never have to see the beautiful white snow ever again, knowing it would hurt me more than anything. But here I am, in southern California, a young woman leaning against a window not able to rip her eyes away from the one thing that almost destroyed her, in a land where she was promised that the cold would never come. 

But I feel so alive, and I want the snow more than anything. I don’t want to watch it, I want to touch it, feel it. So I do. I pick my heavy numb body off the ground and carry myself to the door. My heartbeat quickens again, this time threatening to leave my chest. Thump. Thump. Thump. My feet slap against the tile in rhythm. I was actually doing this. I was actually doing this.  

My fingers feel for the door knob twisting it slightly. The flickering lightbulb casts my shadow on the wall. The cool metal licks my fingers. Okay Ani. I push the door open. A cold breeze washes over me. Welcome back, it whispers filling my lungs, stinging my throat. But i love it. Oh God how I love it. I stick out a foot, hovering it above the snowy porch. I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I press my foot down. Tingles shoot up my toes, the cold bites, but it feels so good. I press my other foot into the snow, now completely outside. The cold air fills me up, the freezing powdery snow slips through my toes. I had missed this more than I had known. Warm, wet tears trickle down my frostbitten cheeks. I walk further, barefoot, leaving imprints behind me. The sun keeps rising higher and higher. I can hear the faded skis calling me from the closet, begging me to pull them out, to dust them off, to start again. I go inside the house, but this time, I’m coming back out.