The Schizophrenic Nature of Dreams

It starts with a dizziness. A falling sensation that you know you must refuse. But every attempt at resistance hurts. Every pull back causes an inner headache that forces you to give in. You are falling. Tumbling. Spinning. Head first. Feet first. In every direction at once.

Then you are lying on a hill, warm in the sun on the green bed of oft green blades. The air hugs you like a duvet, keeps you warm.

I wonder why I fought coming here. Why I had ever been anywhere else.

I lie in a pool of my own blood. My mug-shot plastered to the cold hard pavement beside me, oozing red.

The sky is blue again as your head steps off the round about.

I remember why I pulled away from this place. My heart seems to expand in my chest, welling with fear. It rises to choke me.

An arm appears at my side; warm and friendly. I know this arm. I know this person. Gently it moves to wrap itself around me. It feels like home.

Then it chokes me. The malicious fingers digging into my neck, biting down on my air ways like a hungry Parana. I am drowning.

I spin from the water and into the sun. The grass bounces beneath me – reaching out for my body’s embrace.

I am alone again in this Heaven. And I spin. Right up the vacuum nozzle in the sky. Flying and hurtling. Head first. Feet first. In all directions.

I am in bed. Consciousness hugging me. Hardening me. Making me stable again.

I am free.

[Sunday Night, 28^th February 2010, 12.00 a.m.]

Random

Purple swirls of blue dust float up toward the light drifting in through the trees. Emerald soup hugs the chocolate pillars supporting the pink and orange specks in the sky. The breeze rustles the leaves, covering the rabbits’ efforts to get a better look. The smell of water, powerful and calm, wise in its almighty tickle of crystal sapphire. Hear it running through the land, distant but ever present, fuelling the life of the forest. Warm glow radiates from the pounding, curious hearts of everything around here. Everything is alive and thriving.

This is where we find Sierra, stood lost and out of place, peering out from behind a safe looking tree. Her eyes are wide, frightened. The atmosphere she creates opposes the natural mood of the wild, repelling her like opposite ends of a magnet. There is something wrong about it.

Sierra wants to cry. A golden squirrel curiously slides closer to her, eyes wide and rich, wild yet concerned. Sierra lost her brother in the trees. She now views them as a threat, the wild things that took her brother away from her and ate him, led him to the gingerbread house and swallowed him up like a light snack. Her breathing was shallow and harsh at the same time. She needed Ross.

Seeing

When you see everything, when you see everything, life becomes tough. When every twitch and every flicker is noticed, the truth is unveiled. The truth that hurts. Nothing can be hid, nothing can be ignored. The minute pursing of the lips telling me they’re embarrassed. The inflection shining bright in their tone, stunning me with disappointment. Everything that should be hidden is not. A private light illuminates the skeletons in the closets, reflects off the secrets and double meanings. Everything passes everyone’s expression. No one can lie. No one can hide. It hurts.

Epiphany in the Exam Hall

Have you ever been in the situation where you wish time would go faster? For this event to end a soon as possible? Where you watch the arm of the clock ticking away ever slower; tick tick tick.

Have you ever been in the situation where, in the last five minutes left of that event, you prayed it would never end?

This happened to me recently. You may have had this experience when you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into and then, suddenly, you find you enjoy it. None of the rumours you heard were true and you were having the time of your life.

It may have come to you in a competition when you think you have completed the task only to find you have left out one vital part.

My experience was neither of these. Nor was it like these. My experience came in the form of a shock; a realisation that I had been running too fast. An epiphany that bitch slapped me round the face and shouted “What have you been doin’ mo’ fo’?”

With all reason on my side I should have been happy; celebrating the end of an era and the beginning of an adventure, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was sat in the middle of an exam hall doing my very last exam of my compulsory education. Stats. Fun.

The exam was alright, standard stuff like it always was. I had done so many mock papers this didn’t feel like a big deal. I was done with enough time to get incredibly bored, but not intrepid enough to start doodling on the desk. My mind had started to wonder; what was I having for lunch? How were my friends finding the test? What were they thinking as they stared idly into the distance?

Then it hit me. As my thoughts start to linger on what I was to do when I got home. Instantly I thought “revision”, but I didn’t have any. I was done. It seemed like only yesterday I had been starting this final year and dreaming of this day. The day when it all ended and I was free. But I wasn’t. well, technically I was, but I didn’t feel it/. And isn’t freedom a feeling?

The looming cloud of inevitable boredom hung over my head, smiling evilly at how I had run head first into it’s domain. I was finished. Where had the time gone? What would I do now?

I felt an empty whole in the pit of my stomach as cliché as it is. I had been sprinting toward this day for so long had been aiming for this for so long, I didn’t know what to do with myself. My resolution to live in the moment had back fired. Everyone was leaving after this. I would never see some of the people I loved. All the stories, fantasies I had in my dream filled head had been set with those people, in the situation I had been in for the last two years, and now it was all going away. Those fantasies would probably still happen, but not in the way I had wanted them to. I suddenly felt very unprepared.

I had finally gotten comfortable when, as is the universe’s favourite thing to do, everything had been ripped out from under my feet and I was a hair’s breadth from landing flat on my ass if I didn’t think fast.

This was all in the space of seventeen seconds. All it took was seventeen seconds to change the way I thought about everything. To make me go from wishing one thing, to praying for the opposite.

“Please put your pens down, time’s up.”