The Way I Am If you’ve never been invited into a stranger’s nightmare then I invite you into mine. Do take me literally. I invite for a little tour of my dreams, my mind. It’s a once in a life time experience and if I were you I would consider it. These are my nightmares and I realize that when I put them under your eyes you won‘t understand them. Truly, if you did understand them, I wouldn’t share. Think of this as a window into who I am and nothing more. Any light that gets through the window is who I am, all the shit on the window which opposes me, is what you see if you don’t look deep enough. You know the rules of your dreams, as complicated as they may seem you still may be able to predict the turns and traps; you can wake up from your dream and shake it off right then and there. You know from which corner the voices come or the faces appear, you put up blinders to limit what you experiance and to get you through it as soon as possible. But consider if you may, a new dream; one that you have never lived through before, from the mind of a person who’s seen what you never even dreamed of, from the mind of a person who thinks of things you only reserve for yourself. Would it scare you? I may be too complicated for you; maybe that’ll be the scary thing, the fact that you just don’t understand it. When you enter my mind you are automacally raped of all that protects you, this has happened to me ever since I can remember. It doesn’t spare me, my dreams I mean. As a child I was pulled through the darkest and longest corridors that you can imagine, I was pulled through glass and ice, fire and rock, past the point of imagination and into reality. It’s a line that will never be mapped or found because as you get closer to it, it’s really the last thing you’re thinking about; if you want to think at all. It’s a point in time (if there is such a thing as time) that every part of your body is screaming so loud that you can’t hear it anymore. It’s a point where your imagination and mind shut down because they don’t want to be destroyed by something so much bigger. It’s a point where death is a joke, a mere laugh, something so small that you look at it with no respect, you almost laugh at it; where you have no answers to any questions no matter how simple. In my dreams you don’t feel pain, you see it and smell it and hear it and live it. It envelops you past the point of hurting, past the point of wanting to die. It takes you on, face to face and doesn’t let you look away or blink and it reaches down inside you and grabs at your life and slowly tugs on it smiling with a grin from ear to ear and shaking violently and so fast that you never actually get a look at it’s face. And it isn’t that big, it’s actually quite small, resembles a young boy. (Join me. Jump in) When you see him the last crumbs of logic are still deciding for you and you think that he’s here as another person in your dream, you don’t see him as a threat. Why would you? He skips along down an invisible path, and you notice that he’s no quite straight. It’s as if the ground is at some unnatural angle and he’s vertical to it, almost horizontal to you. He’s happy. He has on grey pants and a white shirt as if just from school. Under his right eye there is a bruise from a recent fight. His smile is conniving but behind it you feel a little bit of innocence that overwhelms you at that moment. Nevertheless; innocence doesn’t exist; except you don’t know that. He looks at you and then starts shaking so fast and hard that your curiosity is exposed to anything, then he grabs you and you shake with him and you feel all the bones, skin and emotions in your body tearing and screaming. You try to, but you can’t yell louder than he does. He screams so loud that you don’t hear it but feel it. In your head. In your body. It hurts. It hurts so much. But it stops. Your heart beats so fast that you think you can’t take anymore except you know you’ll have to. Somehow you were standing there in a corner witnessing him shaking you. You looked like a baby in his arms. Helpless. You close your eyes for a moment. You’re in a room with brown walls and a brown floor and no ceiling. You’re crouched in the centre, nude and cold, looking up into what ever it is above you. You feel it, up there on a homemade pedastulle. Unaware of what it is, you know that it’s what put you in this room. There are no doors. No ladders to climb over. You have to get out, you know you do but there is no conceivable way to. You think, observing your surroundings but it’s hard because as soon as you look at something you forget it and are forced to look at it again and you don’t remember if it’s the same as five seconds ago or if it changed. You think it changed but you don’t remember what it looked like. You carry on this pointless observing for minutes, hours, days, months. There is a thought in your mind, planted by someone other than you and it’s telling you that anything you do will not be good enough. It’s telling you that you don’t know; this is a familiar thought but you sit confused for the reason that deep in you mind, you do know. A tear rolls down your cheek and you try to pull it back to look stronger except that you realize if you have to lie to be strong then you’re only good enough to cry. Finally you stand up and you find that you are not there anymore. You’re camping with your family somewhere outside of any civilization. You’ve been there before but you don’t know where it is. Somehow or other, a whole day of fun just went by but you don’t remember it. You know you’ve had a good time but you don’t remember. You struggle thinking but you just can’t get it. Your dad is going to start the fire but there is a fine to do that, you must cut off your thumb. You look at your thumb and then at the scissors that are being stuffed in you face and in your mind this is the right thing to do. You cut off your thumb. Looking at it on the ground you begin crying because the confusion and helplessness have consumed you. You feel so alone that you resist the music of the wind pleasing your heart. Everyone is smiling at you and being happy and you sit there with your finger on the ground and you’re crying such a heavy and slow emotion. You’re smiling too. It’s not right. You start banging on the inside of this body that you’re in because it’s not you and they don’t know and they just smile at you and nod their heads while this body you’re in is smiling and nodding at them. You have to get out. Everything turns into slow motion and you turn around to see people with animal heads dancing around a pole with human heads on it. They are all dead and they have no eyes but they still look at you and their gaze is so strong that it peals you like a banana, of all thoughts and knowledge. They are dancing to a beat and music played on broken violins as you turn into a ball and float above them also around the pole. Out of the corner of your eye you see the cabin your family is sleeping in burning down. Your parents just stand there screaming because your brother is inside and none of them do anything. They just stand there. You’ve never seen them scream like that and it scares you. It scares you so much. You start changing. You feel as if you’re three again. You sit behind them with your thumb in your mouth and tears on your cheeks and you watch them scream and do nothing. The cabin falls apart and a wall falls on your parents. You hear a sound as if they were drowning. Drowning under flames. You keep crying because your only a baby and you don’t know what else to do. You don’t know anything, how to talk or walk. You’re a baby. You know that you forgot something but you don’t know what it is. A little bit of you is still there, remembering that this is not right. The dancers behind you stop and look at you, from a distance they all tell you how wonderful you are but all you know is that they are not yours. Then you smile. A beautiful woman comes out of the flames and walks towards you. She has a beautiful walk. She is nude and as if respect, the flames only cares her body as a cloth of silk would. She steps out of the fire with the flaming dress on her body. She lifts you and you feel safe against her chest under the fire. She is warm and beautiful. You fall asleep. As you awake you notice that you are no longer in her arms but in her womb. Your heart is beating so hard and you feel claustrophobic and there is nothing you can do about it. You’re drowning in her. Slowly. Thinking about what to do, you notice you have no thoughts. You are so hollow and empty that it seems impossible that you ever knew anything. You feel so bad and stupid. So lonely. You close your eyes. Feeling safe under her wing, she will protect you from anything because something is telling you that even if you were big, you can’t protect you. There are many animals out there who will jump at you the first opportunity they get and suck you dry of all the blood you have and leave your dead carcas on the ground for a scavenger to eat. You can’t take care of yourself. Your bones will be the only things indicating your existance. You close your eyes. When you open them your back in your body again. On a grass meadow. It’s all black. The grass, the trees, the wind, the sky. It’s all black. Different shades of black. This may be what they call hell but you’re not quite sure. You decide to sit, because as far, there is nothing there to hurt you. The black sky starts raining. You start crying. There are no words for how you feel. No words to indicate such submission. It’s indescribable. Out of the corner of your eye you catch a glimpse of colour. Your mind scrutinizes the colour and it’s everything you ever hoped it would be. So warm is the colour, so welcoming. Everything seems to slow down and you surpass it all. You know that it’s just you speeding up, growing out of focus of everything and everyone that is colourless; it’s just you at ease. The dark world around you now travels so slow that you can’t make sense of it. Out of a distance you hear voices but they come so dense that you don’t know what is being said but you fear it none the less. A dark stain spreads between your legs and the tears that were coming out of your eye are now drops of red blood that fall to the ground and stain the black grass but only for an instant, then they disapear and the ground is black again. You fear that the only way you can ever make colour is by crying it and staining the black even for a twinkling of an eye. Something is coming out of the distance, so fast and strong. All sense of good escapes your mind and you realize that what was slow is now travelling on a bolt of lightning. Eventually you see it but it’s moving too fast. It passes only an inch by your face and tears you with it. You are alone again. Alone to contemplate the thoughts that don’t come. You run. Soon you’re running so fast that the skin you’re in starts falling off, hitting the ground with a sick splat sound. Making colour. What ever was moving slow is now so fast you feel that the only way you can be good, is by keeping up to this fast indifference. You have to stop but you don’t know how to, your legs can’t stop, they just keep going. You no longer know what is moving and what is still. To save something, you don’t know what; you let it take you. Finally it stops. You’re left standing under an almost vertical mountain. As you look up you know you’ve been here before. This is so much different than anything you’ve dreamt of before is. This is the one that always scares you the most. This is the one that you’ve had ever since you can remember. Since you were walking in diapers. There is no way you can even think of waking up now. You wait. As you wait all memory of what is to come escapes you and any recollection of being here before leaves with it. You look around confused not knowing where you are. It’s dark and the air has a red tinge to it. You’re on a mountain underneath some peak. You’re almost in the clouds. Suddenly flashes of recollection tease you, unearthing what is to come in such broken details that all you remember is crouching, cutting. How do you know this? The ground starts shaking and something falls on your head. It’s just a rock. What do crouching and cutting have to do with any of this? Suddenly you remember but it’s too late to run, even if you had time to you are convinced that you have to stand there and deal with the problem. It’s so scary. Again you feel like such a child, so weak and helpless. This is what has plagued your life since you were in your crib calling out for mommy. You want it to stop but wanting doesn’t have any place here. You feel sorry for yourself and you begin crying but your body doesn’t waver from its already submissive stance. You know that it will happen and again it’ll be your job to try and stop it. It will be your fault. You crouch down and wait. The ground starts shaking and a final whimper escapes your mouth as you look up. A ball the size of the planet you live on is rolling toward you and picking up speed as it gets closer. You stand up and brace for the impact. It rolls onto your hands and you are able to stop it but its shear weight is nailing you in the rock. It hurts but not as much as you’d expect for a ball of that size. Your strength scares you. You must push the globe back up the hill and it’ll be over; so you start pushing and millimetre by millimetre you are making some progress. For a moment you allow yourself to believe it’ll all be fine but the ground starts moving. It’s not solid under your feet. It’s like your trying to climb against an escalator. You try to move your feet faster but then the ground starts changing even more. Long sharp spines come out and you realize that you have no shoes and the spines stab your feet and then the ground turns to ice and you realize you can’t do anything but slide. Then as if to spite you further, as you’re sliding down, the ground turns into glass shards which destroy the bottom of your feet as you slide down across them. The ground keeps changing but somehow you manage to keep the globe on your shoulders and there is a sick feeling in your stomach that tells you this is still managable. You’re not supposed to be doing this. This is not something you should have to do. But you always do. Your hands start transforming into scissors and you look at them but you can’t see them, you just feel it and are convinced that they are in fact turning into scissors. You can’t do anything with hands like that. They are not your hands. You try to push the globe but it hurts the points of your hand and your feet no longer work but you must push the globe up. You can’t anymore. It stops as soon as you think that you can‘t do it anymore as if to show you that it knew you would give up. The little boy smiles. This time there is a little bruise under his left eye but he doesn’t want you to see it. He stares at you admiring his achievement. In your head you feel the supports cracking and you fall out of your physical body; oblivious to this, the boy lunges himself at your body knocking it to the ground where it lays moaning. Everything dissapers. You open your eyes and find yourself in a pure white room. Everything is the same shade of white so you aren’t sure where the walls are. The stumps where your feet used to be leave round bloodstains where you stand and you’re standing on just bone. Your hand are in fact scissors but something is preventing you from looking at them. You just feel it. Everything comes into focus. You are standing in front of a tribunal. The judge, jury and executioner are just one. Your defence resembles the executioner but that doesn’t strike you as abnormal, they always were similar. The trial begins and words are said so fast or slow that you have a hard time following them. You hear something and because you concentrate so hard on not forgetting it, you miss the next thing said and then you forget what you were not supposed to forget and when it’s your turn to answer, you don’t even know what the question is. The judge looks at you and then smiles. Your sentence is set but you don’t care what it is, anything that could be said eventually boils down to the same. You loose. You hear a river and a door slam. Glass? Ice? Fire? Suddenly your lungs start protesting. You cough and fight against what ever is holding your lungs shut. You loose. You sleep. You’re carried away on a river. It’s smooth and then turbulent, not giving you any time in between to raise or lower your guard. When you wake up you are still on the river. It is fascinating. So powerful, that nothing can stop it; yet so weak that it thinks nothing can stop it. You put your feet in and it welcomes you. It’s warm and full, controlled and giving. You decide to take your clothes off and dive in. The first plunge feels the way it should. You’ve missed this and to have it again is good. Something gets in your eye and it stings a bit. You go to raise your head above the river but you can’t. A wave of panic lunges from the deep and you know you’re stuck till the drought. Your whole body starts stinging and the pain intensifies. Your are under the river moving with its currents and it’s hurting you on the way to its eventual end. What do you do? I ask you; what can you do? Something in your mind answers; nothing. You must obey the fear and you must follow the track which have been layed out for you. The rivers offers no trust, any attempt you make to swim is quickly homed on and destroyed, stolen and turned against you. When you manage to swim a little closer to the shore it dissapears and appears behind you, twice as far away. The hate you feel for the river feeds it. But what is the opposite of hate? Are you expected to love it? the drought is welcoming. You appear back in the white room. You roam trying to figure out where the walls are, where your boundaries are. Somehow, this is where you are meant to be. You wander for days in one direction and then for weeks in the other. Never finding a wall. This place is so big yet you feel clausterphobic. It’s all the same, as far as you go out, it’s all the same. The vastness of your prison can be summed up by the area where you stand; empty. There is nothing there. Finally, you find a window. It’s so beautiful outside. So full of colour and light which dances and sings. Sometimes some colour falls but then others help it up and it’s more radiant then ever. You cry. Your tears are wonderful, colourful and bright, they feel so good and for this you don’t want to stop. You want to continue crying and filling this emptiness with your sorrow and make it yours. Have something here yours. As if to cheer you up, the colour outside gets brighter. So bright as a matter of fact that it shines through a door that you did not know was there. A way out. Your run to the door and open it. It was never locked because the room never knew you’d find it. You jump out. How lovely it is. You cry wildly to celebrate this, to celebrate you mixing with other colours but something tugs at your insides. Closing your eyes you admit that this was too good to ever be true. Turning around you see a face looking out of the door, it’s smiling at you and laughing as it reels you in by your emotions. Your emotions are strung out so tense that you want them to snap to releave the pain of keeping them in, but somewhere along the line you were told that you have to keep it all in. You have to die with it. Eventually, however, you will not only snap but you will snap others with you. Another change of sceanery and you hope that this is the last one. There is music in the background. A song that kept you company many sleepless nights, Wish you Were Here. You look up, at the one who has put you in here. The whole world starts spinning around you to the beat of the music. There are words coming out of your mouth, ever so quietly you are singing along with the song. There is a bright flash behind you so you turn to face it. An angel is standing there. She is so beautiful, the way her body is curved and her wings folded back. She is wearing a white gown that covers any skin except that on her face. Her smile is warm and inviting and her hands are behind her back. How lucky you feel to be in the presence of such a beautiful creature. Her eyes strike you as different than what you’d expect. Deep inside there is pain and as you come to realize that, her white gown is slowly turning red. She is bleeding under the gown, you run over to help but you don’t know how. You love her. As you get closer the bleeding stops and again the gown is white, you caress her. She stands by you and loves you with all her power and might. Her love is wonderful, so pure and true. You fall asleep. After many days you wake up and she’s still there with you. She hasn’t left. After a minute she back away and you see that her gown is slowly turning red and her wings are loosing feathers. No sound comes out as you try to yell so you run over to her but there is something blocking you. You find your voice and tell her you love her and always will. Always! She looks at you confused and her eyes inquire, why? Her hands come from behind her back and inside each hand is a shard of glass which she sets on her chest and cuts. She backs away and asks you why you love her, she has blood coming out of her mouth and again she hurts herself with the glass. There is so much blood. Soon it forms a puddle that slowly moves in your direction. You are standing there frozen. As the blood rolls under your feet you fall in and start drowning. You drown in so much confusion and love that you’re not sure if it was ever true. All the blood is drained and you find yourself staring at her running away and trying to fly. Every flap of her majestic wings is useless because she keeps hurting herself and ripping out her feathers. And with every failure to lift of the ground she rips out more and stabs more as if to punish herself for her own imagined faults. She runs away as you lay on the ground bleeding from every wound she has created on her body. You look up and see the little boy. Behind him a passageway opens and he steps through, for just a moment you catch a glimpse of what was on the other side. You were, in the future, caressing your child and your Angel in the purest white silk gown. It’s hard to believe that was you through the passageway but you try to none the less. You try to see ahead into the future because it was so wonderful but you realize it’s not your own. Nothing around you is yours, event the things that you know ought to be. Even liberty from your confines. Nothing. That’s the scariest thing here. The fact that you can’t decide because you’re not trusted, not good enough. You’re left in the dark, being force fed light of a certain colour and then punished because you don’t shine light of a different colour. You live out your existence behind a wall supposedly out of choice, but that’s because if ever once you stepped past the wall you were yanked back so hard that going past it again is not worth the pain. The strength you posses is anormous, but you’ll never use it to destroy the wall. You know in the time you take to gather all your strength and to aim your canon, the little boy will come hopping down the path and kick you where it hurts most, then when your down he’ll keep kicking and kicking that when he’s done, your a nobody again. A tear runs down your cheek; in your nightmare, and in your waking world. The nightmare out of my mind, out of my..... You wake up. I’m always awake.
Copyright © 2000 Peter Izdebski |