rêverie (h.s.)

Chapter 1

Your breath is uneven as you slowly come back to reality and are left with bits and pieces of what your mind spewed up along the night. You always had the craziest dreams, but at the same time they gave you something to look forward to after stressfully long days, knowing they are the only thing that will never change, always following the same plan, an element you definitely needed in accord with your overneurotic lifestyle.
A lot of things have been going wrong at the moment, with your designing career proving to be as difficult as ever you have been struggling to find the inspiration, for one, and most importantly the time to conclude the huge number of clothing pieces that you ought to do.

You wake up with a fragment of the much too common and habitual dream from the previous night, while feeling like you can't shake the bittersweet aftertaste that always makes its way into the top of your morning routine. If only life was a simple Etch A Sketch game, a twist and turn away from having everything you crafted and imagined in your mind laid out right in front of you.
Mornings were never a strong point of yours, with half-closed eyes and glossy, blurred vision, you are in a trance for moments on end before struggling to find your glasses and going on about your day.
There is a certain heaviness that by the time you are fully conscious has already settled into your brain, a black and white film right in front of your eyes, preventing you from seeing colors as they once were. Your feelings are no different, the action itself of manually asking yourself how you feel pushes you brain to search for something wrong. And when you search, you most usually find.
One thing is for certain: this morning was too weird. You naturally woke up right before your alarm, very uncommon from the usual fight to turn off the warning siren that is your clock each and every day. You swiftly get up from the bed after cautiously placing your crocodile stuffed animal that is not a pillow for you, but the only thing helping you fall asleep at the late hours of the night preceded by your routine of sitting on the ground in your living room and having a therapy session just for good measure.
Unless this time your brain is not cluelessly asking for a command; the weight seems to have lifted off your mind and your vision is clear, like a movie playing right in front of your eyes. Have the colors always looked like that? You have not ruled out the possibility that someone slipped something in your drink yesterday.
Being in no rush whatsoever today, your clothes seem to pick themselves out and looking in the mirror is not a completely impossible and draining activity.
You go on about your morning, and step out into the world outside of your neon pink front door- an accent that has always reminded you of your favorite movie, therefore making a mental note each time you get out to start romanticizing your life more. So you do. Your bus ride to work is peaceful and you get a feeling of comfort when remembering that you checked off the last chore you had to do for Nancy off your list so that officially declares you: not-so busy. It's a start.

You strut to the entrance of the building with too much good-spirit and serotonin roaming through your body, and as soon as you step in, Sophie makes sure to address the elephant in the room that is the joie de vivre radiating from your body "Who are you and what have you done to Vivienne! God, can you pep me up? I barely crawled out of bed today"
She surely does not seem changed, so she is the main vouch that you did not end up in some opposite distorted dimension since the last time you were here. "Sophie, I feel like an alien, what if I am an alien, can you check, oh god I feel...good? This is too weird."
"I am starting to get concerned, did you just say you feel good? Oh wow, are pigs going to fly next?"
You dismiss your colleague and drop yourself into your chair sighing and coming to terms with the fact that today will have to be a good day. You decide to pull out your journal and sort out the mess of ideas that is your brain: there is an upcoming schedule for this month's outrageous photoshoot so your priority should be to make sure all the overpaid models have not been blinded by their ego so much as to cancel the sessions, and also make a mood board for this month's theme: unrequited love.
Ah yes, that subject is definitely not foreign to you. You were never an advocate of having to deal with relationships. The commitment and devotion one has to craft from scratch for a single person sounded to you like walking yourself right into a courthouse- in the end it would ultimately end up with your thoughts and insecurities recited back to you, a feeling of shame from being called out for the same things you hear over and over in your mind and a dooming sentence in the end: you are not enough.
Of course you gave up trying overall after a couple of relationships that have left cautiously engrained paths into your heart that keep you from considering that anything could be better or different from what it was at the time.
To you unrequited love was favorable now. Observing from afar a certain someone that you choose to put on a pedestal and make the main character in all your sweetest dreams- that has no detrimental effect. You could construct your precious, comforting daydreams and no one shall find out because, as far as they know, you may or may not be a total stranger. The secretive and unattainable aspect of it gives you a rush of serotonin paired with a poignant reminder of what your life could be if you just put aside your self-doubts and fear of failure and said 'fuck it'. Obviously, your life is not a nostalgic coming-of-age film and you are not taking the role of a confident, bon vivant type of girl who can successfully sweep everyone of their feet. If anything, you are the quiet and half-funny sidekick that gets to tag along with anyone who will accept her.