Italic text is used for emphasis or an alternative time/place. The ' ' are for thought-dialogue. The " " are for normal dialogue. I apologize in advance if my Spanish is wrong.
Amor Estúpido, y mi Sueno
"Goodbye, mi amor."
I freeze, I cannot look at you, I cannot look at anything. I can't believe you said that. To anyone, to me. You have no idea what you're saying. I don't know how to react. I don't know how you want me to react. I pretend not to notice. Or care. I pretend that I wasn't listening, or that I didn't hear you. My heart pounds in my ears as I wait for you to walk away, to get in the car, 'leave.'
'Go away' I plead silently, 'leave... now! Go!' I was both drawn to this new and riveting situation, and completely repulsed by it. 'No,' I think, 'no way, no, no, NO!" It screams in my mind, becomes a silent echo. And I am not really here, I am far away, in a dream I had long ago. A dream I knew was important, a dream whose connection to reality had not yet been revealed. Until now.
I am standing in a meadow. It is a beautiful, sunny day. The sky is clear except for a few white, fluffy clouds. Butterflies hover above the flowers, birds sing as they flutter through the air. A faceless man, a shadow, someone I don't know, walks with me. I am comfortable with him, happy. I can feel that he is my friend. I am older, my hair longer, darker. I am wearing a summer dress that goes down to my ankles; it is white with lace around the end. I don't wear any shoes, I am happy to go barefoot. I gaze happily at the flowers, the sun, the lovely day. The man next to me is happy too. But I feel his edginess, his hesitation. I know what is coming. But I don't want to listen to my gut.
All too fast, it happens all too fast. He gets down on one knee, and looks up pleadingly into my eyes. Time stops. The dream goes on. I try to will this situation away. I want to reach my hands out and stop what I see happening around me. I don't say anything. I don't even move. But I didn't say no. All the sudden he is gone, and I am left thinking, 'I don't love you, I'm sorry, so sorry, but I don't love you...' The words are left unspoken. They won't fly from my tongue and make sound. I watch as my head spins around, I am in two places at once, as is only possible in dreams. I am experiencing my dream and watching it happen to me at the same time. Ladies twirl around me in tight circles, some I know, some I don't. They are plump, with a grandmotherly air about them. They sing perils of joy, and toss flowers into the air. The flowers land on me and all around me, the women are purposely tossing them on top of me. The flowers are indistinct, pale purples, pinks, and yellows, but mostly white. Out of everything I notice how many are white. I do not want to understand.
I want to cry out, to tell the ladies that they have made a horrible mistake; that I do not love him, that I can't get married. But they are going too fast, or I am going to slow. I do not want to crush their happiness, of all the things I could worry for, I worry about disappointing them. I am so confused, my head hurts, I just want to sit down.
Then it stops, suddenly, completely. I blink open my eyes, the grayish night presses in around me, comforting me. My dreams do not always tell me things that will be true, but I can tell which are just dreams and which contain a prophecy delivered from my subconscious. This was one of those dreams. I think about what it could mean. I do not love anyone, and I have never been loved in that way. The man in my dream was just a figure, one with no face or name. Only implications of the future. I remember how sad, how lost, how devastated I was. I didn't love him back, that had been my crime. That was where my guilt lay. I so badly wanted somebody to love me, but the truth was that I couldn't love them back. I knew too much about true love, and too little about the love that I saw every day.
The memory of my dream passes in a blur. I am back to reality, or at least closer to it. I want so badly to think you were joking, that you were just playing with me. But I know that's not the case. Something inside me snaps. 'I don't love you,' I think, 'and you don't really love me.' You may think you love me, you might just think you like me. But neither are true. Neither can be true. I won't let them be. I don't love you, and I don't want you to love me. I don't care about you like that; I don't care about anybody like that. I'm sorry, but I can't love you. I'm sorry, but I don't. My mind races, what am I supposed to do? Say something? Say nothing? Bring it up later? Pretend it never happened? I want to let you down easy, but I also want it to stop. Here. Now.
"Wait! What did you just say to me?" I was incredulous. I was furious. I was embarrassed. I was terrified. You give me a look of blank confusion, mixed with surprise. A look I know I give you all the time. A look I know I give everyone. Yours only lasts a second, whereas mind would last hours if I bothered to time it. A million different expressions cross your face, and I read them all, because I don't have to look. I know.
"What?" You ask, trying to seem innocent, but your fear bleeds though your poorly formulated disguise. And I cannot stop thinking of how much I don't love you. Of how much I don't want to love you. Of how relieved I am that I don't love you. That I can't. I'm not being shallow; I just know too much to love you. You're too... young. No, that's not the right word. Too... I don't know. Childish, maybe. Though you're almost a year older than me, you don't look it. Or act like it. It's not even that, it's your personality. You're too... jittery. No, not jittery. Annoying. Not relaxed enough, or smooth enough, or aware enough. You are like the third little brother I never wanted, or had. Only you're older than me.
You think that I am the child, but I am not. I would never dare to pervert the most sacred of all words-love. In Spanish, or Latin, or whatever the hell you were speaking in, I knew. I knew what you were saying. And I hated you for saying it. Please... don't. Not ever again. Especially not to me. I can't stand it. How you dare insult everyone who truly loves, like the two who walked, hand in hand, into the sunset. Into the unknown and the unformed. Into nothing but that single moment of pure happiness. My son races though their never-ending forests and fields, laughing, always in the light of the sun. He never tires; he never grows bored or unhappy. The two are together in that long-forgotten land, and they are happy. That's all that matters; their story ended right. And he relishes in that fact even more than I.
I shudder at how you spit in the face of the beautiful, sad mermaid, who holds the empty corpse of her love above the sucking, crushing waters of the sea. He never knew that she loved him with all her heart. And now she waits, forever. Hoping for nothing more than to see him again. For she is trapped on the rock she rests upon, the single rock among the crashing waves. And she sings to her love of her love, her wild red hair flowing in the wind, as her eyes stream tears for the son that was never born. She cries as she laughs, and sometimes she remains silent, stroking his hair, his face. Sighing that he is so far away from her, and in more ways than one. There is hope for the mermaid, but the future she was originally promised has been destroyed. And she weeps for all that has been lost... and forgotten.
And you have mocked the two dancing Scorpios, the two circling dragons! And you have dared speak about a false love in his most sacred of tounges! You have scorned the ones that I see ever so clearly and admire so dearly. The ones that cannot bear to even notice my son or I among the rocks and the sand of their lands. I speak much of these two, because they are so beautiful. Both so evil, both so pure. Both so much the same, both so passionate and powerful. They dance the dance that is both a challenge and a surrender. They dance the dance of love and war, hate and desire. They do not gain the upper hand, and therefore do not lose. They are locked in battle, frozen in time. They are too clever to move beyond this point, but they envy no one. They would not move from their spot if only to move closer to the other, and farther from the rest of the world. They are more an idea then they are individuals, though they are that too. But mostly they're dynamic, beautiful, and riveting.
"Never mind." I call back to you. It has only been a moment, a split second. I want you gone. I want you gone now. I need to cleanse myself of your ignorance. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."
You say okay, but I do not hear you, I do not listen. I do not even look at you. I wait impatiently for you to leave. I feel overflowed with thoughts, and I so badly want it to be a joke, for it to mean nothing. I do not love you, nor do I want to. I do not want to hurt your feelings, but I no longer want anything to do with you, not even to be your friend. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, and frankly I don't care. It will be interesting to hear you tell me, finally, that you like me. And it will be fun to watch you squirm like a worm on a hook. It will be hard to say no, I don't like you, and I don't really know why this is. I don't want to hurt anyone, least of all one of my friends. But it is something that must be done. I can't make you stop thinking that your pathetic, distorted view of love is for me, but I can make sure you know that I don't 'love' you back.
I hate you for mocking them, though you do not know the insult you have inflicted. You do not, cannot, understand. And I do not love you.
Mi hermano menor.
This is a true story. The dream is a real dream that I had awhile ago, and all the dialogue is what was really said. It's pretty fresh in my mind, I'm not likely to mess it up or forget. All of it is what really happened in the literal, physical world, except when I am describing the "real" couples. The couples are the reason I put it under Pokémon, that and so it could be in the same category as my other stories. If you can figure out the couples then bravo, if not, well... I might go into more detail later. Also, I don't really have a kid, that's only a metaphor, so relax.
