44. You write a story which ends with the words, "...and then I woke up and it was only a dream." And then you wake up.
I suddenly sit up in bed. My heart is pounding, tears still wet on my cheeks, I look around. Am I still dreaming? I hear the beeping of the alarm clock, but I don't trust it. I listen to the house creak as the furnace comes on, and the wind blowing the leaves in the backyard - still not convinced. The dream was too real, and I woke up before, only I didn't really.
I used to call them "terror-mares" these dreams I would have. I didn't have them often but when I did I remembered every detail for a long, long time. Deceptively normal, the dream starts out with boring everyday things, grocery shopping with my daughter this time. Nothing outlandish like winning the lottery or being a movie star.
We were driving home from the store, she and I chatting away about the skeleton system, it was what they were studying in science last week. There was no dramatic music or feelings of anxiety to warn of the shift in the dream. She starts singing along with the radio, and I muse about singing lessons for her as I round the bend in the road. We crash headfirst into the car in our lane. The singing stops, the music stops, time stops. Crunching, screeching metal, tires, cries.
My eyes are still closed, my heart is pounding, and I can feel the tears seeping from the corners of my eyes. I hate those dreams. I hear an annoying beeping noise, no doubt the alarm clock. Thankful for the interruption of a terrible dream, I open my eyes. I am not in my bed. The hospital curtains sway from people passing by, quiet feet walking quickly from one place to the next. The beeping gets louder. I look over, still expecting my cheap plastic alarm clock, and see the heart moniter keeping time with my heart. This is not a dream.
I must have cried out. Nurses enter the curtained area where I am laying, looks of concern and alarm on their faces. One nurse has glasses, just like my daughter's. I scream her name, and their look of alarm increases. They begin talking in clam quiet tones. Car accident, critical condidtion, broken bones, medication to help you rest dear. I fade away, pulled down to blackness by the medicine in the little syringe they put in my IV. The beeping fades away too, it becomes smaller and smaller...
Then loud, too loud to ignore. I suddenly sit up in bed.
51. Just calm down and begin at the beginning.
"Just calm down and begin at the beginning." The police officer looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak.
"The beginning?" The beginning, where is the beginning. Is the beginning when I was 5 and my mother married my new stepfather, and I learned what it was like to feel left out and ignored? Is the beginning when I was a teenager and that same man threw the pot of spaghetti that I had made on the floor because of a careless comment I had made? Or the time that he dumped coffee on my head because I dared to yell back at him that one time? Is that the beginning, when I learned that men acted like that and that it was normal, it was just part of life?
Or was it when I met another man, one who wanted to be with me, but used his hands to make sure I knew that he was in charge? Was that the beginning? Maybe it was tonight. When my man decided that it wasn't ok for me to use the phone and ripped it from the wall, maybe that was it. Or when he followed me to the neighbors house screaming and yelling accusations, curses, and threats.
I looked up at the officer. I suddenly knew where the beginning was. I began telling him the story of tonight. The beginning was right now, the beginning of the end.
49. Doesn't matter where you begin, you'll end up back here.
Stuffy, smothering little town - everyone has their nose in everyone else's business. She was a bright and energetic teenager just biding her time to see this place in her rear-view mirror. Big dreams and a big life awaited her out there, but for now she waits, and waits...
**
Hello big city! So many new things all in one place, who would have guessed it was only a couple hours away from the cow farms. Malls and stores, clubs and restaurants, taxi cabs and city busses that ran all night. Young men that were interesting and exciting. She didn't know that it wasn't safe to walk from the bus stop at midnight until she saw the shocked faces from her new co-workers. She didn't realize people would lie and take advantage until her new car broke down, or that the taxi drivers would take the long way if she didn't watch them carefully. She finally learned that a new and exciting man was just someone she didn't really know, and that they might be lying about things like "love" and "forever."
**
Coming home felt like sinking into a comfortable chair - it was there, waiting for you, when you needed it. When she was scared and hurt, it was soothing and caring and warm. She went for long, carefree walks in the sunshine, hearing the stream gurgle and a dog barking somewhere further down the dirt road. She felt tension and pressure float away into the fluffy clouds. She would smile when thinking about the big city, and shake her head What had she been thinking?
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