A/N: Serious trigger warnings in this. So please don't read if you can't handle that sort of things.
This is an AU kind of...
This is a story based around a friend of mine who I lost. I'm putting it as Quinn when her mum has just taken her back after the pregnancy.
I'm terrible with English, so I apologise for any and all mistakes throughout...
In My Dreams, and in My Wake
Sleep seems a dimension unknown to me. Seeming to far away; just out of reach. I think and wallow over the things I've seen don't and experienced, generally the ones that I'm not best proud of. It's said, your land of dreams is your escape from reality, but every time I close my eyes, even just a blink, I relive those moments in all the sights sounds and smells that were apparent at the time.
Etched, sketched and scarred into the forefront of my memory like a scar on the back of my eyelids. I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for the fact I have to remember (The councillors that don't know what to do with me and pass me to the next and I have to relive the moment all over again as I have to explain for the 1000th time. I'm tired of feeling like a lost cause as they throw me around like a pass the parcel) to know that I'm still okay and others aren't. Some things can be so final. For the most part, I just want to let it out – scream.
My worst fears, my harshest memories, they're all relived in my dreams, wake up shaking, can wake up crying. In a cold sweat. But no one sees it, no one can help. It's all in the dead silence in the night.
The more I think the more I dwell. The air; forever ripped from my lungs.
But the worst of it is when I wake from my dreams; I remember it's also my reality. Once I've found my bearing after bolting up right with laboured breathing and a cold sweat, I lay back down in a slump, the thoughts racing around faster than should be coherently possible. Occasionally my mind falls blank, but it's still there.
I'll get through it. That's what they all say. Sometimes I try to believe them, but how am I supposed to. It's been years.
But to be fair, the dreams, tears, sweat fear and screams, they remind me that I'm still alive and human... It's hard to remember that sometimes. I feel so empty and cold most of the time and the numbing sensations that I have to put up with are just something I've come to terms with... Though at the start were unbearable.
The bleeding and the pleading, those that are screaming while I lay restless in dreams. I can't even escape when I wake.
But
I get up; I move around,
Cannot show my weakness now?
Just remember those dreams,
are my memories,
that still hurt.
Or those ones that are my fears,
that I can't care to face.
Just look into my eyes,
see that I'm silently pleading,
the safety of warm comforting embrace.
I'm still silently screaming from my undead dreaming.
Waiting from my heart to stop bleeding... Stop beating.
And the cuts and scars to start healing.
Welcome to my reality, there seems no escape. Not in the land of dreams; nor the land of the wake. No matter what or where, my heart still aches, my mind races. And I'm bedding for a moment of forget or silence. I'm begging to be the free careless soul I once was.
But that seems forever long lost.
Hold me when I hurt...
Sometimes, everything around you feels like it's closing in. Rooms are too small, voices are too loud and the people are to close. It's suffocating.
Your thoughts are yours and yours alone. This is both a blessing, and a curse. You choose to write them down somewhere to somehow let go and alleviate the pressure of your own thought pattern. Be free of them, to stop them from domination your mind.
However, when you write one down, another creeps in. You know it's impossible for the human mind not to think of something. The mind can never be empty for it is always at work.
But that doesn't mean you can't wish for a peaceful mind – empty. Huh, wishful thinking. Now that's a though that makes you laugh.
Finding a way to relax just for one moment seems impossible once more.
Dark and depressing thoughts floating aimlessly in your skull until you can't take it anymore – your thoughts- for some sort of relief.
Sometimes you press to hard and your pen pierces the paper with such a deafening sound that you close your hand over your ears and clamp your eyes shut just to see if it helps block it out. But even when it's over, the sound echo's and slices through you like a knife.
You do this in complete privacy of course. You can't have anyone see you're weak still and know about your looming depression... You know you've become a burden on the ones around you. That's why you've isolated yourself and keep away.
The only way to keep people away is to be a raging bitch and build walls. Only you can see the imperfections in the mirror now.
At first, it helped a little; to direct all your frustrations onto someone else or pretend they're not there at all. Make the others feel miserable too, just so you know you're not alone; not the only one.
But it was short lived, you were only fooling yourself and you couldn't keep that up, because you know for a face that you are alone. Every night you sit alone in your bedroom crying to yourself under the 'safety' and 'comfort' of your new found best friend – the blankets of your bed, and you wonder if anyone knows how low you have sunk and how low you're still sinking.
Every room you sit in, you spend trying to focus on anything but the four walls surrounding you. It has happened... more often than not (when you're alone) that you could just close your eyes that are dark with tiredness, and fold your hands over your ears and pretend of something that isn't your reality of the four closing walls and the deafening whispers.
But you can't.
You have to put up that front and show people that you are okay. So at the end of the endless days, you can just go home without questions and be alone, vulnerable and depressed there.
Your mother doesn't notice, nor does anyone else. You think that, if she really did love you, she would do something, anything, even just read your eyes. They're the ticket to my soul and emotion. But I guess they're just too distant, just orbs that have glazed over and become glass. But apparently I have to deal with it all myself.
That's how you find yourself today, Sunday evening, in your bathroom facing the mirror with a razor in a vice grip between your thumb and fore finger. Eyes shifting constantly between in imperfect shadow in the mirror, a shell of what I used to be to the razor. My knuckles have turned white from the tight grip.
You sigh and think hard about what you're doing. You have been for the past thirty minutes. What's wrong with one more imperfection? You realise your breathing is laboured, your body shaking with adrenaline, as you bring the razor to your skin. It's not suicide because, at the back of your mind, you know that you don't want to die – although it is an option?
Even if it is to live and prove to the world, just because I am messed up in the head, you can still accomplish something with your life. Though it would be easier with someone to give me a push in the right direction or a few words of motivation and encouragement.
But all you want right now in this present moment is to think of something else. To let your train of thought wonder elsewhere than the constant drowning thoughts and emotional pain and depression that eats you up, chews you up and just keeps chewing. You grit your teeth.
You have heard of stories of people cutting themselves, and they've said it brings some relief with it. So you take one more deep, shaky breath and press the blade into the skin of your wrist. Each and every thought is then replaced by a sharp sting and then a burning as the blade slices through you and you can feel your skill pull apart. The adrenaline dissipates as though it escapes with the blood that is not escaping your wrist.
You close your eyes as you concentrate on the pain from the wound.
Questions briefly enter your mind; do you like it? Do you feel better? Was it what you expected? Is it what you have been looking for?
The answers are simple. Yes, Yes, No and Maybe.
You don't know why, but as a small trickle of blood appears right next to the blade, you feel as if everything is going to be okay, and you can see the true beauty of it. It's like an art. And as you feel that pain, you know you're not completely dead inside like you have been feeling for what seems like forever. And that was what you wanted, to know you could still feel something.
But the pain all too quickly dissipates and the thoughts that you had momentarily forgotten come flooding back in with vengeance. So you look back to your wrist and quickly move the blade a couple of millimetres further down from the other already bleeding wound and you start your second. Deeper this time. You repeat and repeat and repeat this action, and you can feel the rush, like the kick of being high.
You're hooked. And you like it.
Before you know it, you're covered in what you know will form scars, but you can't bring yourself to care because what was plaguing your mind before seems to be a distant memory for now while the pain on your arm is persistent, although throbbing. You start crying and laughing hysterically all at once just from the pain and relief.
When you're done and you have hidden the damage with a bandage tight enough to continue the pain, it makes it strangely easier to sleep, knowing you can feel something that isn't depression and it's not the same thoughts tonight. But when you start your morning and the bleeding has stopped and the pain has subsided enough, your mind trails back to the razor lying amongst the bottles and tubs of your bathroom cabinet. Before you back to it, you write down what you felt last night when that blade went through you like a pen gliding over paper...
-Relief-
It's kind of like smoking, once you start? You can't stop. The addiction for relief is there. And you don't want to stop either. You can't stop the emotional pain, but you can tame it. You don't see a way out of this, and you don't mind, you don't care that it will probably scar you for life.
You learn to love that buzz you get before the first contact with the cold, sharp edge of the blade, how everything just seems to drain from you in an instant. The way a simple action can solve all your problems. Temporary as it may be, no one else has yet come up with a better solution. And because it never lasts, you do it over and over again. And you finally have that power, oh that power over your mind. And once you get that sort of power over your mind, who wants to give it up?