I have both dreams and nightmares of normalcy.
A nice husband who isn’t around for most of the life we’ve shared together, four kids whose ages he isn’t familiar with, but says he just can’t care to remember. A first-floor apartment overlooking a side street. Kids are playing and I make lunch on a quiet Friday afternoon. In my dreams, I am not half the bad cook I am.
I snap out of it at 3 in the morning, I’ve always been wondering why we insist on calling it “morning” when the sun hasn’t even risen yet. And when Momma asks me what’s wrong, I tell her tales of an international space station where strawberries have gone extinct a couple of years after the apocalypse.
I don’t know anything at all, and perhaps that is one of the two things that I know for sure. The other, is the fact that I was doomed to a life of consistent contradictions. No—not the head over heart kind of contradiction, but what if I was to rise with the notion that I’ve caved in to the monotone I used to despise a little bit too much? What if our parents too spoke with such urgency that it was hard for their friends to keep up? What if we found out that the spark in our eyes is genetic, only to discover later that every fire eventually dies out, no matter how persistent and frantic?
I spend my days hiding behind a mellow nothingness that drapes like curtains my mind, and my nights tiring the glaring sun screaming bloody murder in my resting ears till it swears not to rise any more.
One morning, I wake from some dreamless sleep, easy on the mind and heavy on the soul; ordinary in every way the lives we lead are. My mother does not bear to ask what the hell is wrong with me. Instead, she cradles my head in her lap. She prays for me as I nap for what feels like a minute but actually lasts a few hours. She thinks me someone whose idea of forever has been the temporary tattoo of the word “believe” fading on my arm. And God knows how she pities me. Only I know how I pity myself, and I hate that.
A nice husband who isn’t around for most of the life we’ve shared together, four kids whose ages he isn’t familiar with, but says he just can’t care to remember. A first-floor apartment overlooking a side street. Kids are playing and I make lunch on a quiet Friday afternoon. In my dreams, I am not half the bad cook I am.
I snap out of it at 3 in the morning, I’ve always been wondering why we insist on calling it “morning” when the sun hasn’t even risen yet. And when Momma asks me what’s wrong, I tell her tales of an international space station where strawberries have gone extinct a couple of years after the apocalypse.
I don’t know anything at all, and perhaps that is one of the two things that I know for sure. The other, is the fact that I was doomed to a life of consistent contradictions. No—not the head over heart kind of contradiction, but what if I was to rise with the notion that I’ve caved in to the monotone I used to despise a little bit too much? What if our parents too spoke with such urgency that it was hard for their friends to keep up? What if we found out that the spark in our eyes is genetic, only to discover later that every fire eventually dies out, no matter how persistent and frantic?
I spend my days hiding behind a mellow nothingness that drapes like curtains my mind, and my nights tiring the glaring sun screaming bloody murder in my resting ears till it swears not to rise any more.
One morning, I wake from some dreamless sleep, easy on the mind and heavy on the soul; ordinary in every way the lives we lead are. My mother does not bear to ask what the hell is wrong with me. Instead, she cradles my head in her lap. She prays for me as I nap for what feels like a minute but actually lasts a few hours. She thinks me someone whose idea of forever has been the temporary tattoo of the word “believe” fading on my arm. And God knows how she pities me. Only I know how I pity myself, and I hate that.
