Derealize

This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. 

My heart begins to race. My face and palms begin to sweat. Everything feels so surreal. I feel like someone punched me awake. Like they just threw life my way and told me to deal with it. To process every emotion at 190 miles per hour. To figure out how to live and deal with myself when I hate my entire existence. Every second of every day. I never had the chance to just be, to just exist. Each thought taunting me, telling me that I do not deserve to exist, that I am a burden on everyone who claims they care. 

Except for him. 

But he’s leaving me too. 

And I’m trying to find the words; trying to find the way to express this colossal tugging at my heart—my heart which has felt empty for so long. The void that I have tried to fill by partying, and painting, and studying, and eating. By doing mundane things. But the mundane things do not help fill the void. 

I am empty. I am void. 

That is, until he awoke me from my walking coma. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m floating behind my body. Like I’m watching everything happen to me from an outside source. 

I watch myself curl up in his bed, using his sheets to cover my snot-filled face. To bear him the sheer shame of seeing me cry tears I haven’t shed in a while. 

I look at myself, sitting still in his large bed and staring into the darkness. The lights are off, and the only sound is coming from the air conditioning. 

His words are blurred out. I can’t understand anything he is saying, almost like I forgot the English language. 

I’m trying to stay present, to listen to him. But my heart hurts and my mind is wandering off somewhere far. Somewhere I can feel safe, where I won’t feel rejected or abandoned.

I imagine he and I are living in a mansion, and he just came home late from work. I watch myself sleeping in bed while he tiptoes slowly to me, before he plants a kiss on my forehead and wakes me up. The room itself is hazy, but I do not care for the greater details. 

I jump out of bed in excitement and pull him down to me, engulfing him in many kisses. I can feel his lips on mine. They feel so real. 

Is this what death is like? The murmuring of the party in the other room while you play with your toys by yourself as a child. Will I finally be able to create the life I’ve always wanted once I die?

“Nyah, are you taking any of this seriously?”

I teleport back into reality. Into the dark room, where I can’t see him. And I can’t see my face. I have no idea what expression I am wearing today. And it’s cold. And my tears are dried.  

“I am,” I reply robotically. 

“You’re smiling and giggling right now like something’s funny,” he sighs. 

Was I? I can’t see my face, I have no idea what I look like right now. 

“I’m not,” I stutter. 

I observe myself move the bedsheets from over my hands. The air is harsh against my chest. I analyze my palms. Do I truly exist? Am I really here right now?

I am back in that mansion with him. We lay in bed, holding each other so tightly our skin might fuse. 

“I love you, you know that,” he tells me. 

“Promise you won’t ever hurt me,” I ask. 

He stares at me. 

I repeat the question. 

He stares. 

“You can’t promise me you won’t leave,” I plead. 

“You know I can’t,” he replies. 

“Why,” I yell. 

“Because you won’t let me.”

I watch myself straighten up from the bed and scoot away from him. 

“What’re you talking about?”

Now he’s in front of my face. I can feel his breath on the top of my lips. His eyes a dark abyss, like there’s no life behind his eyes. 

“Come on, Nyah, you know this isn’t real.” 

And I am aware that this is not reality. That even my dream world has its limits. 

I snap out of it, and watch him walk to the door. 

“No please,” I plead, “Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

He reaches for the light and flicks them on. And I look at him. Fully scanning his face. How his brown curly hair is unkempt. The way his brown eyes sing songs to mine every time he looks at me. How his brown skin glows against the fluorescent light. He walks towards the bed, and sits at the edge, keeping his head low. 

“Nyah, I’m not sure I can keep doing this,” he says as he puts his pants back on.

My hands tremble against the bed sheets. 

“Something’s changed between us. You’ve become distant, and it’s-it’s hard on me.”

I don’t want to speak. I’m afraid that none of this is real, and maybe I’ll wake up from a nap and he’ll bring me strawberries and tell me how much he loves me and how he’s planned a day for us at the beach and how he can’t imagine a life without me and how he will never leave me. 

It feels like my voice box is trembling too. I was afraid of this happening. I knew he was going to fall out of love. I knew he was going to leave me.  

“You don’t love me anymore,” I croak, trying to slow my breathing and get my heart rate to slow down.

“I still love you Nyah. I’m just… not sure if you love me.” 

Love… Him? 

“But I do,” I plead.

“Say it to me then, not with your body, but your heart.” 

What is he talking about? 

I love you.

The words run tracks in my brain, but my mouth is slow to speak. 

Do I not love him? Do my actions not speak louder than my words? Have I even acted on my love for him? Have I loved him from afar? 

“I just wish you would talk to me. We can work through whatever you’re going through together, but I won’t keep begging you to open up to me.” 

“I do talk to you,” I try to reassure him.

“You don’t Nyah, it’s always another lie. It's crazy how I’m in the same room with you, but it feels like you’re a million miles away,” he explains. 

He’s crying. And for the first time since we started dating, I understand his frustration. 

It’s crazy trying to explain the feeling. Of finally understanding that your actions have consequences, and can hurt the people around you. I’ve been floating through this earth numb, wishing I was a phantom that you see for a split second, only to realize that it was a hallucination. I’ve been going through the motions, forgetting how to care, how to act, how to love. I’m not on the outside looking in. I am inside and a part of this world. I have been alive this whole time, and I’ve been hurting all the people around me. 

“I’m so sorry,” I cry to the sheets, “I didn’t realize how much this was affecting you, us.”

He scoots towards me, and pulls me into a bear hug. His touch his warm. His embrace engulfs my body, and I feel present.

“I know you don’t mean to. I wanna be here for you, Nyah. Tell me how.”

I cry into his bare chest, not caring that I am half naked, not caring about the rolls that fold on my stomach as I push into his hug, knowing that he would never judge me either way. 

It feels good to cry. I feel like a well that was filled to the brim with water, and then covered shut, the water promising to break out one day. And it did. And it does.