I cry uncontrollably, unbelieving that at one time, I thought the ability to remember my dreams so vividly was a gift, a superpower.
It’s anything but.
I was just there, with them, they were in reach, so close.
Heaving and choking, I grip my sheets and scream out in frustration as I try to clear the haze. It’s then I see it, hanging on the back of my door, taunting me, damning me. Tossing away my comforter, I launch from the bed, unzipping the bag and ripping the dress free. Agony fuels me as I grip the lace with my fingers, only feeling satisfied when I hear the tear of the fabric when it gives in my hands. Sinking to the floor, I ravage the dress with my fingers. Every rip brings a sort of liberation as the helplessness leaves me. Here I can rid myself of what weighs me down. It’s here that I can free myself to get to them.
It’s here that I know I never will.
Seconds after I destroy my wedding dress, reality sets in.
I’ll never be free.
As long as I dream, and as long as these dreams can destroy me, I’ll never be free.
Studying the ruined dress in my hands, I bury my face in it to muffle my defeated cries.
I could try to rationalize this act in a thousand ways but can only draw one conclusion.
I’m mourning a future I can no longer allow myself to have.
As long as I keep our shared secrets, as long as my questions go unanswered, as long as the heart I have keeps beating, the more I’ll lose myself inside my web of lies. Full of despair, I stare into space, my heart refusing to give me an inch of release. I don’t know how long I sit in the wake of my own destruction, but I get lost in between my dream and reality, intent on feeling every part of the aftermath.
It’s the sound of the front door and the familiar call of my name that has me scrambling to get my ruined dress back in the plastic garment bag before tossing it into my closet. For years I’ve been rationalizing these dreams. For years I’ve denied my emotions, compartmentalized them, tucked them away while telling myself that perspective and release will eventually come. For years I’ve promised myself that rationalization and reasoning will one day allow me to make peace with my past and lead to some semblance of salvation.
But it’s simply not the truth, and time has proven as much.
And so, when my fiancé pushes open our bedroom door to see the wreckage of those empty and unfulfilled promises, I do the only thing I’m capable of, I stop lying to us both.
Time doesn’t fly—at least it hasn’t for me. It ebbs and flows between the parts I want to remember and the minutes I would give anything to forget. The flow is tricky, especially between the past and present. I’ve got to tread carefully around it because I can get swept-up between the parts I romanticized and the brutal reality of what transpired. When I left Triple Falls, that was very much the case for me.
It took some time for me to see just how wronged I’d been in my time here, and just how manipulated I was. A few years after I left, I got angry to the point I forced myself to face the excruciating truth.
No matter how much they proclaimed to care for me, I was used by the men in my life in an inexcusable way.
I should never have let them have so much power over me.
I should have been stronger.
I should have fought a lot harder for myself and for what I deserved.
I shouldn’t have let them keep so many secrets from me.
To this day, the woman in me still ridicules the girl I get glimpses of in my reflection.
I resent that I still dream of them so often, dragging myself through our memories, which only aids in maintaining my self-made prison. I hate that in the waking hours, I’m a woman intelligent enough to rule my life in all areas with an iron fist, but when I dream of them, I’m too weak to bring myself to begrudge them for their collective crimes against me, the way I should.
Anger should win, but it doesn’t. It never has.
Most people mourn intending to move forward, but some part of me knows I grieve in my sleep to keep my memories close, and they come