Mixtapes & Polaroids | Sam x Deena

44

Illusions are everywhere.

Some say it's magic, the ones who are pure enough to dream just take it as some beautiful, unexplained occurence sprinkled with fairy dust and ideals that make the world less bleak. But it can also be sleight of hand, manipulation, misdirection. On the darker end of things, it's lies. It's trickery, it's believing in something that is dressed up to look better than it truly was but all of it comes down to a single conclusion;

It's not real.

It's true what they say, that if you tell yourself something enough it can be real. Real to only you, real regardless of it's misconstruction and deceptive roots. But it's not the truth. No, it's only your truth and that is something entirely different. Like children believing in Santa Claus, to them, in their youthful, dreaming hearts a pleasant man scurries down their chimney to eat cookies and leave presents. It's their truth— their reality, even when all of the missing cookies and magical boxes that appear under their Christmas tree is from their parents.

All of it exists inside our heads. Our minds are our most trusted ally. Our minds which quite literally tell us how to exist, when to breathe, how to move or speak or feel— our minds that hold all of our deepest, darkest secrets. All of our most cherished memories and our greatest heartaches. The mind is all we are, and you'd think to trust it. Who wouldn't? Trusting your mind means trusting yourself so what happens when your mind becomes your biggest betrayal?

Deena has lived all of her life making sure to never need anyone but herself. She trusts herself more than anyone, maybe even more than her friends. She trusts herself to keep the house habitable, to take out the trash and pay the bills and make sure the fridge never runs out of food. She trusts herself to be a good sister to Josh, to be a good friend to Kate and Simon and Sarah and now, to be a good girlfriend to Sam too. She trusts herself to be as good of a person as she can be, given the circumstances.

Deena knows how to keep her demons locked. She has mastered that, choking down all of her trauma, all of her darkness. She can do it with her eyes closed. She's got this little drawer in her mind of good memories she visits when things get hard.

Memories of her friends, of that time Simon thought it would be a great idea for them to steal a trampoline from the junkyard and sleep in it all night. They were freezing and none of them got a wink of sleep, but they were happy. They laughed and told stories and watched the sun rise over their shitty town.

Then there's the trip she took with Sam. She can remember every detail like a movie that constantly played in her head. She can remember the feeling of the air hitting her face, the sound of Sam's laughter, her smile in the golden sunlight. It was perfect, they were free and happy and in love. It was everything Deena hoped to be.

But a big chunk of her good memories consisted of her mother. That was the part that was starting to rattle Deena. She can remember bits and pieces, laughing in the kitchen, holding her mother's hand in the mall, she can remember getting ice cream and going on drives. But the harder she looked— the more those memories began to show holes. Deena tried to remember more than just bits, she tried to remember context, she tried to remember the hows and the whys.

But she can't.

It almost feels restricted. It was like running in place, no matter how hard she tried she could never get any closer, or dive any deeper. And Deena wonders for the first time in her life that maybe, just maybe, the little bit of good she had in her head wasn't good at all.