I had a dream I was in a car crash.

I felt the airbag explode on my chest and shove me into the cloth covered seats of my car. I don't know what I hit.

I kept hitting the window, trying to bust it open and get out, but my arms could barely reach it.

I didn't remember the dream when I first woke up and texted you. I didn't remember it when you called nearly two hours later and said "We need to talk" rather than a simple hello.

I've had this dream a lot, actually. In different forms.

I think I told you about the one where I got away from a man by busting a mirror across his face and then watching as the shards hit a gas line and blew me back to reality.

You've always said I have a vivid imagination...

You were joking about cutting the rest of my hair off, since it was shorter than you liked. Joked about how you would've beat me in the park had I tried to run away from you.

I didn't find that too funny, but I laughed anyway. And you didn't even notice.

You said you weren't angry, but now, staring at the phone and your name with no messages for over 4 hours, I don't really believe you.

How do I know you love me if you do this every week?
How can you be mad at me when I'm trying my best to keep you and everyone else happy?

I want to cry. But I'm sick of crying, and I'm sick of this fucking charade game I play with you.

I wanted to leave. I want to be done with this. I told you that.

But I don't know how I feel. I don't know how much you love me. I don't know. That's what you say. And that's all I know, I suppose.

I roll onto my back and stare up at the pitch black ceiling.

I don't like this.

I had a dream I was in a car crash

I remember pounding on the glass and watch part of it crack under my force. But I was moving too slowly. And the cars kept driving by as I kept pounding away, feeling the stickiness of blood and the sweat from adrenaline on my face.

I remember almost getting hit after I got my license having to drive into a ditch, and I remember hitting that deer and watching its life flash before it in the headlight beams.
I remember the guts and gravel flying up the windshield and the blood that dripped off the black plastic when I pulled off the road.

I remember you being angry that I had busted your car's fog light.

Two weeks ago, I lost hearing in my ear after we got in a fight. You said you didn't mean it. You also said you didn't mean for me to have to use so much concealer on my neck.

But you also said you liked me marked up. Besides, they weren't permanent.
I don't have it as bad as some other girls. I'm a good girl, so I'm treated like a good girl.

My cat paws at my arm and stares me down once I glance over at her. I haven't fed her yet, but she doesn't yell at me like she usually does.

I roll onto my side before sitting up. She lays down where I was and watches, boredly, as I stand and walk into my bathroom and flick on the lights.

I don't look in the mirror and instead stand there on the cold tile.
I smell bad. But I don't want to shower. I don't want to think there.

I reach for the deodorant and roll it on my armpits, hoping that will help. I see the diamond earrings you bought me for Christmas and I feel the goosebumps roll up my arms.

I remember that night, too.

I had a dream I was in a car crash

The airbag was pushing me down, smothering me- burning me the more I kept pounding on the glass window, trying to get out.

I felt the chemicals burning into my skin, melting my clothes and the seatbelt to me as it pushed against me further and further.

It was getting hard to breathe.

That night started off fine. You told me how pretty my dress was, how stunning I looked in it, you kissed me and we had dinner together.

Like normal people.

We went to your place and exchanged gifts and kissed again.

Like normal people.

And you stripped me and held me down by my hips and by a knife at my neck.

Like truly normal, normal people.

You kissed me and told me how much you loved me, and how good I was, and 'it wasn't a big deal'.

Like normal people.

You laughed when I said, weeks later, that I wasn't going to have sex with you again.
Because that sure as hell wasn't sex.

But that's not what normal people say.

I had a dream I was in a car crash

I remember shoving the air bag away from me and pounding on the door because someone had finally stopped and saw I needed help.

He was tall, with spiked, blonde hair.
His face was dark, even when he came up to the window and waved at me- mere inches from my panic-striken face.
He put his hands in his pockets, and I watched as my vision filled with blood and I screamed.

I stand there on the bathroom floor, cold, and my eyes finally come up to see myself in the small mirror.

I need to replace the bulbs- there's only one working right now out of the four and I'm barely able to see the puffy redness under my irritated, blue eyes or the blood on my chapped lips or the matts in my hair.

I look back down to my sink and my eyes land on the pair or scissors sitting there. I couldn't remember how they'd ended up here.

I hadn't gotten my hair cut as short as I wanted.

I picked them up and looked at myself- distorted- in their metal.

Somehow, I looked better this way.

I looked back up in the mirror and watched the blood pour down my face like the tears I refused to let out.

And somehow, I looked better that way, too.