Dream

TAKE ME THERE

�� Sanity is such a delicate creature, constantly requiring supervision to remain healthy. Am I insane? I suppose it?s at least possible. And if that were the case, it would only be logical to assume that my family is right about me; that their actions are justified. In the recent past my mind has been pushed to its limits repeatedly; brought to the breaking point more times than I care to recall. I admit that there is a chance that it finally has snapped. Still, I have my doubts. I?ve never thought that this would be what insanity feels like. I always thought there?d be less pain; that it?d be a little more? blissful. I?ve never believed that a truly insane man could feel the pain that I am constantly in. Still, it is difficult to hold onto the conviction of sanity when everyone around me is constantly telling me otherwise. I believe it was Aldous Huxley who said that, ??if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes the truth.? Sometimes they can be terribly convincing. I constantly question the reality of the past. I think of the events leading up to my current state and I wonder if maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I was wrong about everything. Maybe I am crazy.

�� A cold breeze seeps through my partially opened window, chilling me through the thin and tattered blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I?d close it if I could, but it?s embedded in a smooth, featureless wall six feet above my head and covered with a thick grating. Outside, I can see the thin moon through the falling snow like the sadistic grin of a Cheshire cat. ?It can?t be helped, we?re all mad here. If you weren?t, you wouldn?t be here.? But I?m not mad! I know I?m not, no matter what they say. The moon through those bars looks so different that the moon from outside. It almost seems like it?s mocking my imprisonment. I have to turn away from the window now; it?s making me angry.

�� My belief of my sanity is occasionally supported by the disjointed howling and gibbering of the truly insane echoing down the corridor outside my ?room?. It can be absolutely terrifying to hear how the empty stone halls twist and distort a man?s voice. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish sounds out of a man?s throat from those of an animal. Every full moon the howling of coyotes and wolves can be heard through the windows, and the insane return their cries. Those poor souls are the ones who are belong here, not me. I remain silent at night while they shriek and moan until the sun comes up. It seems as though I am the only one who sees this difference.

�� You might be wondering why I?m writing this. Why? I can?t really say that there is one definite reason. Surely part of the reason is purely personal. That is, I?m writing this partially for myself, for the therapeutic act of putting one?s secrets down on paper. I?d also like to believe that this is a last grasp to change the path I?m on, but I know it isn?t. My writing this isn?t going to change anything. I guess I?m also doing this in an attempt reconcile with my loved ones. I know that they will want some sort of explanation from me, some sort of closure. I only hope this will suffice, though I doubt it.

Before I can speak of my present state I need to explain the past. Otherwise nobody would understand my actions at all, and you all would pass me off as simply another madman. Perhaps I should have attempted an explanation before it was too late. Now, I know nobody would believe me. I?m in too deep. They?d only see this as a sad attempt by me to get them to take me out of this place. They?d never believe me. So now I will tell you about when everything first began? when the dream first came to me.

�� According to my judgment, it would be about three years ago when this all started. At the time I was still married to Elise, though our marriage was already collapsing at the time. She was planning on leaving me, but she didn?t know that I knew. Subtlety wasn?t a particularly strong skill of hers. It didn?t hurt me as bad as it should have, I suppose. I wasn?t in love with her anymore, and it was just another blow to my already low ego. She had been working at turning the kids against me. Since she saw them much more than I did, it wasn?t very difficult. I guess she wanted them to choose her when the inevitable divorce finally came.

�� The reason I didn?t see Michael and Diane as much as Elise did was because I had to work all day to support the family. I was at an office position for a medical supply company called Soma Pharmaceutical. I hated working there; I had no chance for a promotion and was scheduled ten hours a day. My boss hated me for some reason, and decided to make it his duty to assure that I was miserable every day. I couldn?t leave though. That was the worst part. Even if I never would, it?d be nice to know that I could leave if I really wanted to, but I couldn?t. I needed the money so desperately to support the family. Elise had stopped working about a year earlier, leaving me with the sole responsibility of providing food and shelter. She claimed it was because the kids weren?t getting enough attention. So, as a result, they?d get plenty of attention from her, while I barely ever saw them at all. By the time I?d get home from work, they?d already be asleep and Elise would usually be on the couch watching TV. We would go through the formalities of, ?How was work?? and, ?Did the kids behave?? and then she would go up to bed.

�� That?s another thing; we had been sleeping separately too. I?d sleep on the couch while she claimed the upstairs bedroom. Apparently she disliked me so much that she couldn?t even stand to sleep in the same bed as me. I don?t know how she developed this aversion to me. I?d always tried to make her as happy as humanly possible, often sacrificing my own joy for hers. I gave her everything she wanted. Still, it wasn?t enough. And worst of all, I found myself falling out of love with her too. Maybe we were just too young, I don?t know. We seemed so different from when we had first met. We had grown to be completely incompatible, and we both knew it. At the best of times she merely tolerated me, at the worst, she loathed me.

�� It wasn?t always like that, though. When we had first met in college things were different. I was a sophomore, she a freshman. Both of us were English majors; both wanted to be writers. From the moment we first met, we were inseparable. We started dating a week later, an quickly fell in love with each other. We moved in together three months after we first met. Can you believe it? Only three months! That?s how happy we were together. When we graduated, we started working together at a bookstore. A year after graduation, we got married and moved into our first real house, where we still lived up until everything fell apart. It?s strange: I?ve only been away from the house for a few months and I?ve already forgotten nearly everything about it. I still remember the address though: 2273 Melissa Ave. It had meant so much to us at the time, the address. Our first real house, a symbol of our lives together. Even now, the number has special meaning to me. Everything had seemed to be working out perfectly. We were so happy with one another.

�� But things change. When she got pregnant with Michael she had to leave work. We saw each other less and less each day as I took on extra hours to handle the loss of her income. Only a year after Michael?s birth, she was pregnant again; this time with Dianne. I left my job at the bookstore and got hired at Soma, which paid more. We barely saw one another and the magic was obviously fading. We fought constantly over money. She refused to get a job and stayed home with the kids. I guess in a way I was jealous, since they both favored her immensely. If she ever left the house without them, they would kick and scream and carry on for hours, whereas they scarcely noticed when I left. Elise became a total stranger to me. I admit that I wasn?t a much better husband though. I mean, I would try to make things better, but after a while, I just gave up. We both knew it was over, we were just waiting for an opportunity to end it.

�� One night, I came home from work to find the house in silence. I went upstairs to check on everyone. The kids were asleep in their beds, and Elise was in our (her) bed asleep. Sitting, half empty on the bedstand was a bottle of Triple-Sec. This wasn?t the first time she had drunk herself to sleep, and I knew it wouldn?t be the last. I kissed her forehead and went down to the couch. There was nothing on T.V., so I got a blanket out of the closet and fell asleep. It was then that the dream first came to me.

�� I found myself standing in a valley, surrounded by rolling black hills. The sky had a dark reddish tinge and the yellow sun was motionless on the rolling horizon. I immediately began to move forward, walking determinately towards an unknown destination. I reached the peak of the first hill, and found myself looking at an endless horizon of row upon row of the black, featureless hills. Still, I continued to walk in a straight line, descending into the next dark valley and climbing the next hill. I continued to do this for seemingly hours, and the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. The sky darkened until it only shone with a faint, ruddy glow. Finally, reaching the top of a particularly large hill, I looked down, expecting to see only another barren valley.

�� Instead, I was surprised to see a cabin nestled in the long shadow of the hills. A short, crooked chimney rose from its thatched roof, and a warm light emanated from its tiny square windows. I immediately realized that this place was the destination of my journey, and hurriedly climbed down the hill towards the cabin. I reached the rounded wooden door and raised my hand to knock when a voice spoke up in my mind, ?You don?t need to knock.? I obeyed and pushed open the door.

�� I was instantly awash in warm light, so that I entered the room blindly, rubbing my eyes in an attempt to adjust to the drastic change. When I took my hands away and blearily opened my eyes, I saw her for the first time. She was sitting in a wicker chair staring at the floor. As I watched at her, she looked up at me with tear-filled eyes and said, ?I?ve been waiting for you for so long.? I feel as though, at that moment, I instantly fell in love with her.

�� She was the epiphany of beauty. Her eyes were the deepest shade of pure emerald and glowed with a life that I had once seen in Elise?s eyes before the world drained it from her. Her black hair fell just past her perfect jawline and shone like the feathers of a raven. And her face? her face. My first thought was, ?She?s an angel,? but I somehow knew that couldn?t be true. The moment I laid eyes on her, I knew I would never want to leave her side. I reached out for her, and she came to me. I stared into her eyes as she fell into my arms.

�� But the instant I touched her, she disappeared. The cabin disappeared. Everything disappeared and I realized that I was awake.� Never before had I felt such anguish as I felt that morning. Not once during the dream did I doubt that it all was reality; that everything really was happening. When I awoke alone on the couch, I realized that it all was just a dream. Reality came rushing back into my mind and drove the nail of truth deep into my heart. I cried that morning for the first time in twenty years. I cried for my lost dream-love. I cried because my wife didn?t love me anymore. I cried because I didn?t love her anymore. I cried for the children, who would soon abandon their father. I cried for everything in my life that I had been ignoring until then. It was over for me. It took every ounce of energy and willpower for me to get off the couch that morning.

�� I was unusually downtrodden all day. A couple people at work commented on it, pretending to care out of obligation. I told them I though I was coming down with something, and sat silently at my desk, trying to keep my mind busy with work. I kept thinking about her, about what she meant to me. I avoided conversation with anyone, and spent the day deep in anguished thought. When I came home, everyone was asleep again. For once, I was glad. I didn?t feel up to the usual trivialities with Elise. I went straight to bed on the couch, hoping she would return to my dreams.

�� But she didn?t come to me then. In fact, it was over a year before I saw her again. My life became a desultory chain of worthless events, not only because of the dream, but also because of the other things happening at the time. I had known that my life was dull and hopeless, but I chose to ignore it. Ignorance is bliss, right? This dream, though, showed me how pointless and inane my life really was, and it hit me hard. I grew even quieter than I was before, completely withdrawing myself from any social situations whenever possible. People at work noticed and tried to talk to me, but I just didn?t feel the need or desire to talk back. I let them say what they wanted to and promised I would try to be friendlier, though I never did. It all seemed pointless. And all this time, I still thought of her every night.

�� Then Elise left me. One July night I came home from work to find the house completely empty. She took the kids and went to her mother?s house. She left me a note saying that I wasn?t the man she had married and that this was the only solution possible. I didn?t argue with her? she was right. We had grown too far apart. The divorce went rather smoothly (as far as divorces go). She got the kids and I got the house. We split our money nearly 50/50, which annoyed me a bit since I had earned all the money, but I didn?t fight it. After all, I did get the house. I was ordered to pay child support, which I agreed to do. Elise promised me that we would stay in touch, but after only about a month, we rarely spoke. I saw the kids every Saturday for a while, but they seemed so sullen and unhappy when they were with me that I decided to let them spend weekends with their mother.

�� I suppose I missed them. The big house seemed so empty at nights, and I sometimes found myself wandering the upstairs halls in the middle of the night. I would walk into Dianne?s room first, and imagine that she were still there. ?Goodnight Dianne,? I would say to the empty room. I had let Elise take all the kids? furniture, and just hadn?t gotten around to refurnishing the kids? rooms. I would see the room like it was before Elise had left, and I would see Dianne laying, tucked in, in her bed. I would kiss her forehead and walk into Michael?s room, where I would do the same thing for him. When I would go to bed, I would imagine Elise was sleeping next to me. Sometimes I could almost hear her heavy breathing and feel her warmth. So, yes, I did miss them.

�� It was on one of these empty nights that I had the dream again. I had all but given up hope that it would happen again, so I was rather surprised when I found myself wandering the strange black world again. I followed the same path as before, and came to the same house. And she was inside too, waiting for me. She rose from her seat when I entered the room, her dark robe trailing behind her and said, ?Why did you leave me?? I opened my mouth to answer, to say something like ?I had no choice,? but found that I couldn?t speak. She came to me and I took her in my arms, looking deeply into her magical eyes. I brushed her hair back and kissed her. When we broke the embrace, I found myself awake again, alone.

�� This time, though, I wasn?t depressed after waking up. On the contrary, I was happy? I was ecstatic. She was back in my life and somehow I knew that she would return that night, and the one after, and so on. And she did too. Every night from then on, I visited her cabin in my dreams. The dreams grew longer, and we would spend hours talking to one another. She didn?t understand why I had to leave her every night. I told her that her world was just a dream, but she disagreed strongly. She said that it couldn?t be a dream because she was always there; she couldn?t leave like I could. She was convinced that she was in the real world, and that I was just a dream. I didn?t argue with her much. I knew that she believed it so strongly that nothing could convince her otherwise. Besides, I was beginning to doubt my perceptions of reality by that time. I came to dread waking up every night, knowing that I was leaving her alone in the cabin, knowing that she couldn?t wake up, knowing she was trapped without me.

�� She became an integral part of my life. Since, with the exception of child support payments, I had no family to support anymore, I left my job and paid taxes with savings. I would spend most of the day alone in the house, reading books and thinking about her. I would go to sleep earlier and wake up later, spending more and more time with her every night. I stopped talking to Elise or the kids completely around this time. I also stopped calling my friends and family. I secluded myself in my house and was alone during the day, but that was the way I had wanted it; the way I still want it. But I know that that isn?t possible anymore, so I?m left with few options.

�� Then came the weekend that everything went wrong. It was Thanksgiving, and my mother and father and brother came over to eat Thanksgiving dinner with me. We talked a lot about things going on in my life. They were very concerned with me because I had quit my job and because I never call them. They thought I was too depressed over Elise leaving me. I told them that I had never been happier but, of course, they didn?t believe me. They also said that I had lost a lot of weight and looked unhealthy. Parents. Always worrying about their kids. When they found out that I slept twelve hours a day they only got more concerned. The actual dinner went great, and for a while I felt like I really had a family. But then it all caved in.

�� My parents had gone to sleep soon after dinner, and I was doing dishes with my brother, Troy. We were talking about the usual things that brothers talk about: cars, sports, girls, and he asked me if I was seeing anyone at the time.

�� I told him.

�� I told him everything: about the dreams, about Elise, about my life in general. I told him why I slept so much, why I left my job, why I never called. I told him I was in love with her. I expected him to be supportive, to be happy for me. Instead, he was worried, very worried. He wanted to tell our parents. I begged him, pleaded him not to. I told him that they wouldn?t understand; that it would only worry them more. I told him that I was okay, that I was happy with life right now. I made him promise me not to tell them. But he did anyways.

�� The day after they left, my mother called me. I was instantly sure that she knew everything by the tone of her voice. She was hesitant and wary. I could tell that she was paying extra-close attention to my every word. She wanted to know how I was doing, if I was okay, if I was looking for another job. I could tell she wanted to know more, but was too afraid to ask. I answered her as best as I could but, knowing that she knew about my dreams, I used extra caution, and probably only sounded strange to her. She ended the call by telling me that she loved me and that, no matter what happens, will always love me.

�� The next day my parents appeared at my door, accompanied by a vanful of large men in white suits. ?It?s for your own good,? she told me, ?we?re going to help you.? The men put me in a straightjacket (can you believe that? A straightjacket!) and loaded me into the white, windowless van, which took me here.

�� It?s called Charles Lewis mental hospital. A hospital! This place is no more a hospital than it is a restaurant. It?s a vet for the insane. I haven?t left my cell (there?s no sense in calling it a room, though they insist that it be called that) in the three months that I?ve been here. They feed me by shoving a trayful of undercooked meat and vegetables through a slot cut into my door. There?s a tiny cot, a toilet, and a sink in the room. Nothing more. They think that this place will help make a madman better but, if anything, it would only contribute to one?s insanity. It?s only put a larger strain on me than anything on the outside world could.

�� The worst part of it all is the sterility of the place. Everything is white: the walls the sink the toilet, even the bed. The only bit of color I have is from my window, which is set so high up on the wall that I can only see a sliver of precious blue. The monochrome of this room is enough to drive someone batty in of itself. I think that when I awake to my dream, I?ll blink for hours, trying to take in all the colors.

�� Every week a psychiatrist will come into my room with two guards, and will talk to me for an hour. He asks how I?m feeling, if I still dream, if I believe that she is real. While I talk, he writes things in his notebook and glances up at me through uncertain eyes. I can feel them on me as I look down, his eyes, that is. He watches me for the slightest slip, the smallest hole in my armor and then bores into it like a parasite. I know he thinks I?m crazy? everyone thinks I?m crazy, even my own family.

�� I can?t blame them though. They did this because they believed it to be in my best interest; because they love me. If they knew the hell that I?ve felt here, I?m sure they would have never sent me. I can?t talk to them at all though; they say it would only put more stress on my mind. If I could only tell them how it really is in here, if I could let them see my side of things? but I know I can?t.

�� And they make me take these small yellow pills at nights too. Those are the worst of all. The pills make me sleep, only it isn?t a normal sleep; it?s a sleep like death. I lose consciousness and wake up, sometimes twenty hours later,� feeling groggy and disconnected.

�� I don?t dream anymore?

Ever.

�� I haven?t seen her at all since I started going here. I think about her constantly, waiting for me in her cabin, alone. But that?s all going to change very soon. I?ve lost her once, I won?t lose her again. She?ll never be alone after tonight.

�� You see, I?ve been saving my pills, hiding them under my tongue until the orderlies look away. I have nearly a month?s worth now, more than enough to carry out my plan. I started hiding the medicine because I thought that I might be able to dream again, but the dreams still haven?t returned? so I know what I need to do now. It?s the only way to be with her again. I have started to wonder about that dream world. I think that it must be real because it?s far too detailed to be all in my head. My imagination isn?t nearly powerful enough. That world seems more real than this one. I know now how I can live in that world. I know how I can dream forever.

�� People will just pass this off as another insane man killing himself? I know they will. However, I assure you I am not insane. I have coherently thought this over for a long time now, and I?ve made my decision. I don?t want my family to blame themselves for this. I would have come to the realization even if they did send me here. I know where I belong now, and it isn?t here. I will now swallow all the pills I?ve been saving and go to bed. By the time they find me in the morning, it?ll be far too late. I?ll be free. I?ll be where I belong; in her arms forever.

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