Dreaming in reverse

She remembered the day they moved into that house very well. Not a grand or splendid house, but well enough to make it a home. She could not believe how happy she was. Just married, a ring on her finger. A simple model, but its beauty lay in its simplicity.

Here, in this house, they would reach the height of romantic felicity. The house would never become a home, it became haunted very soon and civilization came to end. Her husband was away all day and even nights. He assured her that everything he did was on her account.

 Society stripped out. She had to be self-reliant in her fight for survival without companionship. Domestic seclusion didn´t become her. She had become the vision of a woman truly alone. Her awareness of self tuned out and shifted to another frequency.

Hers was not a happy story, not even in the slightest. There was madness behind every word that summed up the memory of an undramatic fall; a descent into ugliness.

What good does it do to look back?  She didn´t feel like sowing regrets anymore. She couldn´t even remember how it all started. Nothing made sense anymore. One day she just started plummeting down and never stopped. That must be a legitimate explanation for sadness, the feeling that the falling never ends. She didn´t feel sad anymore. Just a heavy emptiness.

 She found solace in Gothic literature for a while. She felt a great connection with the monsters and the ghosts of those dark stories. Victor Frankenstein´s creature became her favorite, for he was the loneliest of them all:

- “I am an unfortunate and deserted creature. I look around and no relation or friend upon earth.” he laments on the pages. Just like her. She stopped reading books and tried to write herself, pages and pages, about oppressive loneliness. A study of solitude she called it. But her inner critic had adopted her husband's voice now, and always presented her with heavy opposition leaving her even more exhausted than before she took up the pen. She lost faith in the written word altogether.

Sleep she found; was the loneliest activity in which she could engage. It took her away from herself. Dreams no longer visited her, 

She tried a scheduled prescription for each hour of the day.

- “Congenial work with excitement and change would do me good.” She told her husband one evening. She was heavily reprimanded.

- “Many women would be over the moon, to be a professional housewife.” He replied. He always scoffed at any conversation. So, she became mute, not able to remember the sound of her own voice.

She didn´t understand why she needed to get out of bed in the morning and put clothes on. No longer able to think clearly, she didn´t understand anything anymore. They became complete strangers, nothing more to say to each other, not even “pass the sold”:

- “Some people can wake up every morning, open their eyes and recognize something beautiful, even if it´s just the sun shining across the bedroom. Why can´t you?” her husband once said, many mornings ago. He was right of course. He always was. He always told her how to feel about things. She could never say what she thought or felt in any way. She couldn´t even like her own things without his permission. She started to feel embarrassed about her interests. Everybody laughed about it, and her husband the loudest of all. She concluded that she was socially debilitated. Disgusted with herself for letting the general population make her feel inferior.

On good days she managed to be quiet, polite, and unnoticeable. Subdued!

All intellectual stimulation had been removed from her life. Everything became flat.

“Maybe one day I will turn into something else.” She thought feeling nailed down to her bed. 

Everything in the house grew into an assault on her senses reeking of abandon. If abandon had a smell, could it also have a color? A repellent hospital green perhaps?

How to find solace in a world that has lost all color? Nobody wants to see the pain. Darkness ends up hiding you in a shadow. Dying inside, each day a little more.

She remembered how as a child she would get so much pleasure from staring at walls and furniture. She missed the wallpaper in her grandmother’s house. Sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. Dull enough to confuse the eye and pronounced enough to constantly irritate. She would follow the curves and watch them plunge out of outrageous angles, destroying themselves in contradictions; becoming something new entirely.

“There are things that nobody sees but me.” she mused, “Like the fact that I live in a parallel universe. Neither dead nor alive. Madness is a terrific opportunity to observe sensations from a strange perspective.”

She hoped happiness would find her, somehow retrieve her from this disconnected purgatory, but sadness always got in the way first. It sneaked up out of nowhere, biting holes in what little solid ground was left to her.

“To cease to exist and to die are two different things entirely. I´m no longer afraid of loss.” She thought, “I have nothing left to lose. Did the stars ever reflect in my tears at night? I need an escape. I can no longer feel. Do I have any other option than the ultimate sin?”

 She didn´t fear the reaper. What would kill her quicker? Would she need an anesthetic? 

A flash of violence-hit her out of nowhere. 

- “Stop going around begging for a living and making deals with the future!” a voice rasped in her head.

- “Dry your tears and unearth the secrets of your true nature! Wake up”

“I´m still alive…” she thought she was dreaming.

- “Wake up!” a voice whispered to her again. “Wake up with the absence of your will to preserve an abolition of memory. Remember life! You sold yourself cheap! Wake up and arise from the rubble. There is a world outside and a place for you in it. Dust yourself off and dance down the path to freedom!”

This morning she felt like she woke up from a dream in reverse. It left her feeling anxious and protected at the same time. She smiled at him as he walked out the door.

- “Goodbye!” she whispered, “Today I choose to get rid of all the layers you buried me under over the years. I shed my skin and return to my essence. I have been adrift for so long. I lost connection with whom I really am. No more! The smoke has cleared. I see a bigger picture. I banish the dark and embrace life! With an attitude of gratitude.”