His Pretty Storyteller

How I managed through that morning after the dream was a mystery to me. I woke up at three am that night sweaty and panicked as I tried to grasp the meaning of my dream. What’s that supposed to mean?

It took me a few moments of realization to feel the hot tears that rolled in my cheeks while trying to calm myself down. It was such a bizarre dream that I didn’t even know how to cope.

A few months back, I had this usual share of nightmare that occasionally broke whatever peace I had. It was a recurring dream—me and my mom back in our old house, my father beating us relentlessly. Those nightmares of black and white scenes in our worn-out home where my abusive father did his brutal dance while mama and I shuffled to his cruel steps. It was the same recurring terror that woke me up most nights and made me confront the fact that I’ll be forever haunted by vivid memories of my abuse. Somehow, those night terrors lessened when my father was imprisoned. And all I ever dreamed after then were hazy places, blurred out images, and ethereal scenes where I was just lying in a cloud of gray smoke, dead to the world. Having the black room dream, however, made me feel alive in a drastic way; running, fleeing, losing hope, being saved, blacking out. I didn’t even know how to cope with it.

I stayed still and closed my eyes while I uttered the same words that I reminded myself with for months. The words that were so overused that sometimes they lost their meaning in a sea of false hopes, assurance and promises. You will be okay. No one’s going to hurt you now.
I lied down on my bed and willed the storm inside me to make its way out of my system. I tried so hard to push away the thoughts but it did nothing to distract my mind from having scary thoughts. Black rooms, ghostly white figures, red hair. They all tried to come back, lurking at the back of my mind quietly while I fought hard to keep them at bay. Eventually, I gave in to the temptation of moving around so I got up and started downstairs to quench my thirst that the panic brought.

The refrigerator’s yellow light illuminated the kitchen counter where I stood and gulped the whole pitcher of water, ignoring the splashes and spills my shaking hand caused on my shirt. The cold water refreshed my dried up throat and helped clear the fog in my mind. I refilled the pitcher, put it back in the fridge and sat on one of the kitchen stools in complete darkness. I laid my head on the counter and tried processing the dream I’d had. But the thing was, it was different. My dreams of my abusive father had always been vivid in the mornings and I usually found myself checking my whole body in the mirror to convince myself that they were just dreams. They were vivid, as the counselors told me, because they were real and the terror in my sleep actually happened. However, the dream about the black room seemed blurry after a few minutes of waking up. Because It never happened, it will never happen. That’s why.

There was a little relief then. A simple assurance that my mind was probably just messing with me, giving me dreams that were too abstract and random to be understood. I was able to make my way upstairs steadily and calm. The storm inside decided to let go of my twisted insides and left my system, at least for a little while.
I entered my room, went back to bed, and uttered a little prayer.
Sleep came eventually.
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I couldn’t, for the love of God, recount a day when everything was peaceful and happy. Maybe it was my own damn self limiting my mind to what I should feel. Or it could have been my subconscious reservations preventing my mind from feeling safe and secure. But whatever the reason was, the next morning was entirely different. I was at peace.

It was such a peculiar thought, that after a draining night, my body was at ease and my mind was well rested the following morning. When I woke up around 8 am, I felt lighter and my mood was better than ever before. I lied on my bed and let the early rays of sunlight illuminate my small room, its delicate heat a welcome feeling on my skin. I soaked in the glorious feeling of calmness and just let myself float in a sweet moment of silence.

I was grateful for whatever caused that ecstatic feeling. I didn’t even question what brought the comfort and peace, but instead let it dull the constant hum of fear in my mind.
By the time I was up, mom would have been at work already, leaving me to another day of desolation. I knew that mama never wanted me to feel alone, but that’s what I loved most—the feeling of peace at times when I was the only one aware of my own existence. No judgments, commitments, or expectations to live up to. No eyes that stared or mouths that spoke confusing things. Just me, my existence, and the air around me that carried my thoughts into oblivion.
Getting up that morning wasn’t a hard thing to do. My refreshed mind and body seemed eager to move around, so I got up and made my own breakfast. As the silence of the house suddenly felt foreign to me, I played music in my old disc player, letting myself get lost in the loud songs that used to be confined in my iPod. I knew then that whatever lied ahead would be different and surely, it could be the start of a good day.

I was done with breakfast and was doing the dishes when a thought occurred to me. The dream I’d had the previous night. Of course, remnants of the dream were still glued inside my brain and I could still sense a little bewilderment from it, but all the fear it radiated almost faded into nothingness as if the whole panic attack never happened.

“Maybe I’m just overthinking it. It’s just a random anomaly in my dreams. Pft. Black room? Ghostly white figures with red hair?”
My thoughts went to a halt when I said the last few words out loud.

“Red… hair?”

It took me a few seconds for the last words to really sink in. Red hair? How could I have been so stupid. Of course the red hair was him. The pretty red-haired man had invaded the depths of my thoughts and had showed up in my dream.

Notes

having major writing issues but thanks for sticking with me! :)

--xoJenn