Consumed by dreams

I finally got the experience of what falling from a height feels like. It was an encounter I feared for long. My eyes stretched to its limits, my pupils dilated, my skin decided to go slower than my body and my mind spewed melancholy at the speed of light as gravity accelerated my body towards the rocks. The confusion in my small head perfectly captured the dystopia and paradox of my life. The pleasure of not having to face tomorrow and fear of the pain the collision will cause, tap danced through the vehicle of thoughts. The pain of missing my loved ones was overbearing accompanied by musical harmony in the background. I wished I could have written down the notes dissipating from my thoughts. The ironic pleasure ending the desponded life was corrupting the beauty of the notes. 

Does time freeze when one falls freely? I definitely felt that way. I wondered if this was the relativity my teacher was teaching in the class later that day. The dismal green building of my school and the bespectacled stern faced science teacher came to my mind. She always enters the class full of energy and glee. It disappears within a minute or two. Today as she taught relativity in class. I imagined travelling at just enough speed for me to never hear her voice. I will be able to see her speak but her voice will never reach me. My friend Jim shook me. I startled to realise that my teacher had been calling me all along.

“What are you dreaming?” she asked. I clammed. My brain was revolting against that question. My mouth started to stutter gibberish. The teacher was losing her patience. “Are you going to tell me or not?”, she yelled. That only made my brain go into a panic state. My class was staring at me as if I were a cadaver. My brain did everything except thinking of a response to the question. Time only made the situation worse. After a brief unrest, I found words which could explain my dream. I didn’t realise it was a rhetorical question. My heart pounded and my palm sweat, as I heard my class laugh and my teacher's eyes went blood red. Honesty paid off in a strange way. As the rest of my class laughed at my dream, my embarrassed teacher sent me outside. I realised, I need not attend her class again. I won’t be there to see tomorrow to attend the class. She must be happy to hear that the next day. 

I must now be half way down. It felt like forever. I looked at the side. I spotted a man holding the hand of a child. The other hand was covering the child’s eyes. He was protecting his child. I wondered why. My father always told me protection makes me weak. He did protect me when I was a baby. At what age did I move from being a baby to a child? How did society decide I didn’t need any protection? What is the difference between protection and support? My father is a nice person. His love for knowledge and perfection should not be faulted. He will definitely miss me. I believe he doesn’t realise that. 

Should I pray now? I never understood the value of praying. My despice to praying came from the absurd lies my priest kept telling me. He couldn’t prove to me that God exists, let alone his one. His response was a combination of I am too naive to understand and the truth has been discovered a long time back and is in a book. In effect, he asked me to surrender my critical thinking to his dogma. He asked me to prostrate in front of the supreme creator, whom he couldn’t prove exists. His righteous indignation towards my questioning was a pleasure I will miss. On a different note, I would be free from listening to his boring, unlettered and notoriously devious speeches. In a few seconds, I will have the proof of what will happen after one dies. Is heaven and hell real? I will get an answer. The issue is I can’t come back to tell the truth.  

I looked down. The rock below looked like a pancake. My mother makes wonderful pancakes. A sense of heaviness burdened my heart as my body feathered down. She loved me but never understood when to stop. To her, I was destined for greatness. She once read my essay and told me that it was the best one on the subject she had ever read. I couldn’t believe it as my teacher told me it was worthless. Was it low expectations from my mother’s part or her love blinding her from being honest with me? Either way, I will miss her warmth. 

My friend Jim will miss me too, I thought. He was the only friend I had. For a strange reason he was ready to put up with my idiosyncrasies and inadequacies. His temperate nature complimented my unstable mind. He was just too calm for the company of other boys and too dull for the company of girls. He was perfect for me. 

Finally as I inched closer to the rocks the final moments felt like a Big Bang, a new origin. An amalgam of relief from the pain and fear felt hitherto and a fear of the impending pain made me feel nauseated. I wanted to cry, laugh and hug my mother for one final time before the crash. My body accelerated as I got closer and closer to the rocks. The moment arrived. The jolt was so powerful that my bed shook. 

I woke up with a sense of enigma. It was another haunting dream, one in a series of many which has prevented me from ever understanding what peaceful sleep meant. The situation highlighted the desolate state of my fragile mind.

I woke up with the burden of the dream weighing heavy on my ten year old shoulders. I quickly glanced at the clock. It was 3:00 a.m. I switched on the light to peep outside the window. The cricket chirps occasionally broke the silence of the night. The night world had quietly consumed the pulsating day life with its darkness. I wondered about my dream. It felt so real to me until I woke up. If someone had asked me during that experience, I am sure to have explained it that way. Much like my experience the nightlife feels like a dream as well. It hides the pains of life.

“Stanney, are you awake?” my mom shouted from the room across the corridor. I quickly switched off the light and hid myself inside the comfort of a blanket. Why did I do that? I wished I could crawl back to my mom’s bed and sleep with her. Her loving arms could be the perfect foe to my disturbed mind. I reacted out of sheer panic. If I were younger, I could have cried for help. My dad always says that boys shouldn’t cry. Did he know something about me that I haven’t experienced yet? I felt inadequate and despondent. Could the night consume me like how it consumes the day? I wanted to stay awake at night to enjoy the tranquility. Sleep slowly took me away from these thoughts to another dream.