Interlude 4
All Comes Crashing Down
When I awake there is electricity behind my eyes and a ringing in my ears. The world will not cease spinning, so I choose simply to lie there until the disquiet ends. I can't quite describe what just happened. Knowing my luck thus far I will not be able to. When the world stops still, I am able to finally sit up, but I still cannot process what just happened. Maybe I don't want to. Everything feels so alien right now. The sheets beneath me are soaked with sweat and feel like ice beneath my legs. The wall I am leaning against is hot, fleshy. My arm sinks into its warm and pulsating surface and throbs within it. My breath is ice hot one minute, infernally cold the next. It hurts to think right now, when the world around me is so hostile to thought. But my bedsheet brushes against my arm, stroking it with its cotton fingers, and I think back to an age ago.
When I was young I was, in many ways, as you see me now. The marble skin and the idiosyncratic speech. The cracks everywhere and the eyes that masked them. My father dropped me at the school gates and assured me all would be alright. I was just a child. I believed him, blindly. Like a fool. That day people took note of how I looked – the black hair contrasting my skin, the way I stuck out yet tried to sink back from that. And so, some of them touched me. I already was aware that I did not like that. But I could not say it. We were just children. So I let them. As I felt my arms being prodded, sometimes my face, I began to realise just how I'd been born. Unable to find the words to ask them to stop, unable to prevent people from looking at me and poking me, unable to stop the waves of discomfort that came as their fingers, like icicles, clawed into my flesh and bones, causing my adrenaline to spike and my stomach to churn. It happened for weeks afterwards, and eventually stopped. But those memories did not leave me. They were my first impression of my peers in the human race and those peers, though not knowing what they did, scarred my body with their touch and scarred my mind afterwards. I realised I was born a curse.
Sometimes I wake naturally and feel shame. Deep, deep shame at continuing to bear a trauma I am three times as old as. It should be so far behind it. But I am not. For a long time, I thought that it was taboo to carry something like that with me. It felt childish and immature, but as I came to know everyone I understood how these things are not easily cast off. Link by link, part of your chain was broken. Link by link I must begin removing mine. There will always be discomfort in the touch of another for me, but it doesn't mean my whole self must suffer for it. And I have already begun to find comfort in the touch of others. And in yours.
As I grew older, I gradually became more communicative. I found I could create meaningful connections with people and slowly the fear withered away. But the hatred did not, it lingered around like an omnipresent fog, always on the horizon and threatening to swallow me whole should I wander into it. So I staved it off. Surrounded myself with friends who would keep it at bay, indulged in hobbies that warded it off. But still it was always there as a thin mist, creeping behind, threatening to thicken. To this day I wonder if the connections I forged weren't because I wished to make friends and see those friends be happy through communication, but simply to drive that fog ever backwards until one day I could forget about it. Looking at you, I would like to think you would tell me it's the former. Somewhere inside of me, I can't help but believe it isn't.
I must stop thinking these things and focus. Focus on the present. It has begun to calm itself, return to some form of rationality. The wall is cool and hard against my arm. The sheets beneath me are still cold from sweat, but remain soft. My breath is slightly frigid, meaning I must turn the heating on. It is moments of normalcy like this that stave the fog away. That release me from the chain. Here, thinking about small things like trying not to wake you whilst I turn the radiator on, or how I will get back to sleep, concepts such as self-loathing and feelings of discontent melt away. I used to never understand how you could always live in the present, but every time the little things keep the thoughts that plague me away, I begin to understand why you did so just a little bit more.
I suppose you never thought about the future, really. That's where we differ. I'm too busy being stuck between the past and future to ever really live anywhere in the present for more than a few moments. And now that you're concerned about the future, I realise that I've never really found my place in the present. I think it's time I did that. I'm just unsure of how to. Maybe, like those I have forged bonds with before me, you can be a lantern, dispersing the fog entirely. It would be nice to be saddled with worries so often, to think about myself for once. I've sacrificed a lot to allow other people to live freely in the present. I don't regret it. And now I see you're doing much the same thing for me, trying to alleviate fears and cleanse old wounds. I hope it never gets to the point where you're forced to make a sacrifice.
As for the future? I don't see a reason I shouldn't guide you there. Admitting that to myself when we first met would've been unfathomable. But it would be nice to walk that path with you, with everyone, towards a future for ourselves where nothing from any time can haunt or stop us. My eyes are beginning to close now. I can feel the heat of the radiator beside me calling me to sleep. But I don't wish to sleep. I'm still uncomfortable closing my eyes. Last time I did I was worried when I woke you wouldn't be resting on the floor next to me.
I suppose I'll have to close my eyes eventually. Return to resting and see if another bizarre dream runs its course. If it does, at least I know now that you'll be there when I awaken. Somehow, now, lying here, listen to faint birdsong outside my window and feeling the tense sensation leave my body, I can say I am more at peace than I have been in a long while, despite all that has happened. I mustn't let the past get to me. I must think of my future, but not in a way that harms me. I must allow myself to indulge in the present. I know all these things and yet… it is easier said than done. But I know people change, and they can change quickly. All it takes is a few kind words said at the right time and quickly their true nature is melded or restored, brought to light. You are living proof of that.
The radiator next to me is warm, like a body. Like your body, when I embraced it. Your body, next to mine. I chuckle. It echoes through the dark. Though I can't explain it, that thought carries me to sleep.