Dinner on Friday

9. Carla

PAUSE FOR A CAUSE

Time passed differently for everyone. For me, it crawled by slowly. Hours turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Years went by, and I fell deeper into a dream state.

The days no longer had distinct personalities. Blurred into one, they were like a concoction of blended shit.

In that shitty dream, I was the only character amongst a string of strange, overwhelming feelings. Nothing happened in the seemingly endless dream, but I felt a lot.

I felt everything.

I never realized how wicked feelings were until all I could do was live them. It was awful, all those freaking feelings. I didn't want to feel. I wanted to live but to live, I had to feel.

What a fucking conundrum.

Feelings were powerful at evoking memories, memories that I wanted to keep under lock and key in the darkest parts of the ocean, and not right above the ocean floor, but below in the darkest pits of hell where they belonged.

Nothing was worse than feeling alone and scared.

Abandoned.

Unable to speak.

"Your daddy isn't here to save you, Carla. It's just you and me now, so open your silly little mouth and talk to me -The only person in this world who's supposed to give a damn about you."

I crawled into my shell and a shrill, soundless scream left my mouth. It was quiet for a moment before her voice popped up all around me again.

It didn't surprise me that she had found a way to show up and torture me. This place of in-betweenness was the kind of place I should have expected to find her.

"It's too bad I couldn't love you. Without him around, I didn't see the sense of you. You were supposed to be ours, not just mine. It's hard loving someone who doesn't want to be loved."

Wrong. I wanted to be loved. Every child craved their parents' love. My mother on the other hand wasn't capable of loving me the way I wanted to be loved.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, caught in a surreal world that was a mix of memories and hallucinations. It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't.

Sometimes, I dreamed of nothingness. There were no sounds, no colors, no sensations. Just a vast emptiness that stretched on endlessly. Time had no meaning in this place, and I had no sense of how long I had been trapped in this dreamless state.

Despite the lack of stimuli, I was not at peace. Instead, I felt a constant sense of unease, a deep-seated fear that something was not right. I had a nagging sense that I should be doing something, but I couldn't remember what that something was.

Whatever kind of amnesia this was, it really sucked ass.

The darkness that surrounded me was beyond suffocating, and I longed for a glimmer of light to guide me out of this abyss.

It came.

Or rather, he came.

Gosh, he was sweet and attentive, taking care of me with a tenderness I had never known before. With him, I felt cherished and protected, as if nothing in the world could harm me.

As we stood together, he gently caressed my face, his touch sending shivers of pleasure through my body. And then, he leaned in and kissed me with a softness that made my heart skip a beat. I was overwhelmed with emotions I couldn't quite comprehend - happiness, desire, and a sense of completeness that I had never felt before.