Unbidden awakening

Normal.

A word I am trying and failing to embody. Showing up to school, being in class, pretending to be active in class, and trying to keep my grades up,that is the extent to which I can pretend to be normal. Because if I don't do it, if I fall out of routine and I begin to spiral, I see things that people say aren't there.

That night, i told the paramedics what i saw. Their first reaction was disbelief. Then, later, they said I was in shock. When I told them that it wasn't imagined and that I knew what I saw, they all looked at me with pity and patted my head like I was a good dog.

At the hospital, when I wouldn't stop screaming, a psychiatrist was brought in to examine me. She was bored and uninterested, she asked me a few questions but I wouldn't stop screaming. Eventually, I saw her write down PTSD on a notepad. Later, people started whispering, saying that I probably imagined it. So I started to think that maybe I really did imagine it. Maybe it was all in my head, but I should have known better. Soon enough, my every waking hour was filled with visions of that night, and every night when i would close my eyes, the splintered memories in my mind, created a new horror torture me again.

So, now, when people see me, they just look at me like I am crazy.

I've since been to therapy, and this week, my therapist recommended I try to think about my life being normal. She also said something about manifestation and how what I think in my head reflects in my everyday life. I don't understand it, and I don't even think I believe it, but I'm too exhausted to care. I go along with it because it's therapy. It's supposed to help people and also because some part of me hopes it'll work. So my mantra for this week is that normal is good, normal is great, and the most important thought that i don't voice out about normal is that normal things happen to normal people.

School passed in a blur, and then I was in my apartment. As usual, my Dad was absent from the house he practically abandoned me in. After months of coming back to an empty house, the crushing emptiness that filled me was almost welcome today. Instead of trying to fight it. I let it encompass me until I had no sense of person, no sense of self. I was just empty. A part of me knew that being normal didn't feel like this, but I ignored it because what do I truly know of being normal.

I am 19 years old, and somewhere in me, i understand that everything I know or everything I thought I knew is a wonderfully crafted lie.

I think I fall asleep because when I open my eyes, I am back on that lonely road. This time, there is an eerieness to the silence. I am not in the car. Instead, I'm walking towards it. It's so cold, I can see my own breath. My eyes water from the acrid smell of burnt rubber that permeats the air. They say you aren't supposed to feel pain when you're dreaming, but I do. I feel it with every beat of my heart and in the pieces of glass that are getting embedded in the soles of my feet as I walk towards the overturned car. My chest is constricting and my breath comes in harsh fast bursts. I know I should stop, I want to stop, I know the sight that awaits me, but my legs just keep moving forward, and then I see, and I start screaming. I know I'm dreaming, but I can't seem to wake up.

When I wake up, my throat is raw, and even though it felt like I was sleeping for hours, I was only asleep for less than forty minutes. I go to wash my face, and when I look into the mirror, I don't recognise the face staring back at me. I've not recognised her for a long time. I try to remember the last time I ate and come up blank, a girl with shoulder length silver hair, a too thin face and dull brown eyes surrounded by bruises caused by lack of sleep stare back at me. I remember a time when I was pretty. My hair was waistlength back then, framing a face with delicate features, and my eyes were full of life. Now, I am a shell of the person i used to be.

I run my fingers through the silver strands of my hair. The colour was a genetic quirk from my dad's side of the family. He used to call me his little fairy. We don't talk much now. I feel so lonely, so I just go back to lay in my bed and try to sleep. In my dreams, I'm not alone. Some days, I don't want to dream, but on days like today, I welcome the pain that comes with dreaming because it cuts through my emptiness. A part of me is happy to hold onto the pain because right now, the pain is the one thing that tethers me to them. The pain reminds me that they were real.

That night I don't dream of the accident, I dream about eyes that glow. Golden glowy eyes staring right at me– eyes that seem to stare into my soul, and the powerful forms they are set in. I dream about a black lone wolf with sleek black fur and powerful body– fur that seems blacker than night illuminated by the light of the moon. I dream of running wolves, wolves who seem at one with nature around them, running at unimaginable speed.

Amidst my dreams, I have a moment piercing moment of clarity. I know I'm failing at being normal because normal people don't feel the way I do, normal people have not experienced what I have experienced and most importantly, normal people don't have dreams like I do.