“This is it,” she said.
She looked at herself in the mirror. There were lines etched in the crevices of her face and subtle strands of silver slowly crawling up from the surface of the scalp and devouring locks of deep mahogany, reminding her of her mortality.
As she looked at her reflection, she sighed deeply. She ran the palm of her hand across her face as though she was trying to validate her very existence. She did not recognize the woman staring back at her. The woman who was once carefree and energetic, was now consumed by perpetual fear and grief. She looked at herself once again in the mirror.
“Well, tonight is the night. I will no longer allow my inhibitions to define me”
She slipped into bed with him. James was already fast asleep. She turned off the lights and closed her eyes, trying to hurry up the process. Although her body was dormant, she was on a journey. As Sigmund Freud called it, the dreams were a pathway to the unconscious.” This must be where the Id (primal impulses) take full rein. She opened her eyes to a dim-lit room. She came across a mirror. She looked at herself. She was unclothed, but felt blanketed by the fire inside of her. She didn’t look as worn down as before and she felt completely secure in her seasoned skin.
She found a sticky note placed on the mirror. It read, “Do you dare to open Pandora’s box?”
She was no stranger to literature and Greek mythology. The person who wrote this, knew that. She knew the story of Pandora and the temptation to open the box that unleashed all the sins of the world. She turned the note around which said “If so, take the note. If not, leave it here and return to your conscious state.”
The logical side of her told her to do the right thing. But what is the right thing? Who came up with the concepts of what is acceptable behavior when no matter what we do, it’ll never be good enough? Bad things still happen to good people. It’s the innocents who suffer. She knows that now.
She turned around and saw her husband’s sleeping body. It was as though she had some sort of out of body experience. He was already in a deep sleep, snoring as if he didn’t have a care in the world. This was her life now. All too real. All too familiar. She looked back at the note, and then back at him. “This is only a dream anyway,” she said “And took the note.”
As she held the note in her fingertips, the room suddenly disappeared as another image was being painted by an unknown artist in its absence. The colors were deep tones of crimson, black and grey. The colors were synonymous with desire and danger.
“It is only a dream anyway,” she told herself over and over again.
There she saw a shadow of a figure. She couldn’t quite make it out, but she did recognize that it was a man’s build. A youthful, viral, inhibited young man from what she could see. Definitely not a man in his 40s with a protruding belly and receding hairline. She was deeply attracted to this mysterious figure and she felt something pulling her closer.
Then she suddenly stopped herself. This is Sigmund Frued’s ego, she thought, the part of the mind that is torn between the Id (impulse) and the superego (the highly moral conscious). As she was thinking this, her thoughts suddenly became interrupted.
“What is your worst fear?” the mysterious figure asked.
She hesitated. She knew the answer. She knew it like the back of her hand. She believed that he knew it too. But somehow, she was afraid to say it. The figure got closer, more defined, more handsome than she ever imagined.
He asked again as he gently touched her cheek, “What is your worst fear?”
“Losing control,” she answered.
He smiled. She wasn’t sure if it was devilish or sincere. She felt both uncomfortable and intrigued at the same time.
She looked down, and he put his fingers on her chin to lift her head up.
“Are you willing,” he asked.
She gave him a perplexed look. He just stared at her, not picking up on her nonverbal cures.
“Willing to what?” she said.
“Lose control,” he responded emphatically.
She could feel her throat close up and her body tingle. “This is just a dream,” she said over and over again in her head. She could feel her blood boil and her temperature rise. She was not sure if she liked that feeling. Suddenly it became stiflingly hot and although she was unclothed, she kept pulling at her skin as though she was trying to take off her flesh. The heat became unbearable.
“Wake up,” she quickly told herself. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”
Then she felt a hand on her. She gasped loudly and opened her eyes. She was back in the bedroom and James’ hand was touching his shoulder as he must have shifted positions in the night. She gently lifted his hand back over to his side. She took off her covers, grabbed her robe and attempted to rest both feet on the carpet at her bedside. As her right foot reached the ground, she felt some obstruction tickle the curve of her foot. She looked down to what looked like a ball of crumpled paper. The closer she got to it, the more familiar it looked. She picked it up, uncrumpled it, and her eyes grew wide with disbelief. Could it be the same note that was in her dream? She shook her head as if to shake off any illogical thought she had in her still noncoherent state.
By this time, her husband was waking up. She slipped the piece of paper in the pocket of her robe. She made breakfast, got ready for work and began to forget about her bizarre unconscious experience.
The day went on as it always does. Wake up, go to work, come home, make dinner, watch television, go to bed. It was the same mundane routine for the last ten years since the incident. She and James were just two strangers living the same life.
In the evening, she slipped on her robe, instinctively reached in the pocket and found the note yet again. When her husband wasn’t looking, she un-crumpled it and suddenly dropped it on the floor when she read just the first few words “Do you dare …”
As she went to bed, she was afraid to close her eyes. But what exactly was she afraid of? Isn’t this what she wanted after all? Was she afraid of the dream or was she afraid of herself? Was she afraid of what her mind was capable of and the hidden desires and fears she had that had been repressed all these years.
As he drifted off the sleep, she tried to stay awake for a while. Contemplating whether or not to give into the dream that had somehow crossed over into her reality. It is said if you go back and change the past, those changes can alter the present. Is it the same in your dreams? If you manipulate them, does that transfer over into your reality? She just needed an escape these days. It was easier than facing the reality that got them in this state in the first place.
Her eyelids began to grow heavy again, this time she found herself in the most upsetting situation in her life.
The last day she saw her daughter Robin.
“It was nobody’s fault,” “It was nobody’s fault,” she kept telling herself (echoing the words she often repeated in her reality).
In her dream it was March 14, 2015. But in reality, she was not there that evening. She had to work late. James came home before her this time. He was always extremely tired when he got home. He sat down to watch TV and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Robin asked him if she could ride her bike and he said “wait til your mother gets home.” She argued and said he could watch her. He told her he was too tired. When she kept begging if she could go by herself, he said “just be careful.”
As she was observing the whole situation, her rage began to build. She saw a box on the table. It was glowing red. In her anguished state she opened it, and it released the pain, the hurt and the guilt. It took over her. She ran to him when her daughter walked out the door. He did not see her as this was the past and it already happened. “What the hell is the matter with you?” she said. “You could have prevented this.” She slapped him, she screamed, she cried. She did all of the things she could never do in reality. And once she unleashed all those pent up emotions, she could not stop.
She got his empty beer bottle and hit him over the head. He began bleeding profusely as it hit the right side of his forehead. When she saw the blood, she didn’t know what to do so she just ran as far away as she could. That’s what she did best. She ran away when things got too real, but ironically this was her dream. She kept running and running and running, trying to find her way back into consciousness.
She quickly awakened. She felt around for James but he wasn’t in bed. She saw the bathroom light on. Although her husband was by no means vain, she saw him intently looking in the mirror. As she came closer, he spotted her. “Hey, honey?” he said. “Yes,” she responded.
He turned around as he was touching his forehead, “Do you know where I got this scar?”
She didn’t know what to say, she tried to run away again but this is reality and she’d have to face it sooner or later.
She never lied to him, but then again she never told him everything she was feeling. She never told him all her desires, anger, frustration and that she blamed him. She blamed him for their daughter’s death. Perhaps it was time.
“I did it,” she said looking him straight in the eye, something she hasn’t done in a long time. She never could after the incident.
He chuckled, “how could you have done this? It clearly happened while I was sleeping.”
She looked at him and tears began running down her cheeks.
“Honey?” he asked.
Then she couldn’t hold back anymore. “Why did you let her go?”
He looked at her as though he didn’t know what she was saying?
“Why didn’t you go with her?” she continued.
“We’re not doing this,” he said.
“That’s the problem,” she said. “We need to.”
“You’re blaming me?”
“Yes,” she realized what just came out of her mouth “I mean no, I don’t know …”
“You said you wouldn’t do this …”
“Do what? Talk about her? We never talk anymore. We never do anything anymore. You don’t even touch me, “ she said.
“Everytime I try, you turn away,” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. I feel guilty even trying,” he said. “It’s like you don’t like the sight of me.”
She turned away.
“Look at me, “ he said. “Why don’t you look at me anymore?”
“Because,” she shouted, “Every time …” she stopped
“What?” he asked.
She turned away.
He grabbed her and turned her around, “Tell me.”
“Everytime I do, I see her. And I think of how you let her go.”
He turned his head, “So you blame me.”
“Yes, “ she said and then paused. “And myself.”
“But it’s no one’s ….”
“That night I stayed late at work …”
“You can’t help …”
“I could,” she said. “I didn’t stay because I had to. I stayed because I wanted to.”
“Why?” he said.
“I didn’t want to come home … I didn’t want to come home to the same old thing, the routine, the mundane.”
“But, that’s reality,” he said.
“I missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“How it used to be … before she was born.”
He put his head down. He didn’t know what to say.
I tried to get the words out while uncontrollably sobbing, “And I feel guilty for that because now all I want to do is bring her back.”
“You mustn't beat yourself up …” he said.
“I lost control,” she said.
“You never had it in the first place,” he told her.
He was right. No matter how hard we try, none of us are fully in control. Suddenly she felt horrible for what she said to him earlier. “I don’t want you to beat yourself up either.” she said.
“But you said earlier ...”
“I know,” she interrupted, “I was wrong. I just miss her.”
“I do too,” he said, “And I miss us.”
I thought about what he said. I agreed. “I’ve been having dreams lately. You know what Freud says about dreams ….”
“This is reality, Sara,” he said. “Reality is messy, it’s sometimes mundane, sometimes unpredictable and sometimes it hurts like hell.”
“Sometimes I want to live in the dream,” she said.
“Then we never would have met and would never have had our child.”
“And we never would have lost her.”
“I can’t bring her back, Sara, I wish I could. The only thing we can do is bring back the love that created her in the first place.”
She realized that it had been a long time since she really listened to him. He would talk and she would nod her head, but she was so full of grief and resentment that she wasn’t truly listening. What he said really resonated with her
That night as she went to bed, she couldn’t sleep. She kept tossing and turning, and thinking more than she ever allowed herself to before.
“I don’t want to live my life in my dreams, I want to live it now.”
She hadn’t been living since Robin died because she took a piece of her with her. She knew she couldn’t bring her back, but she could bring herself back.
She rolled over to face James. He was still the man she met 18 years ago. Yes, time and grief left traces of itself on his flesh, but he was the real deal. He always had been, she was just too busy running away.
She leaned over and touched him, gently. He opened his eyes immediately as if he was waiting for her. They looked at each other for a while as though it was the first time they truly saw each other. She touched him once more and felt the passion that she had lost years ago.
“This is it,” she said. “I’m ready to live again.”
