Oblivion

Unreality

Sometimes I wish I could be one of those paper airplanes. And fly, and fly until I crash into the ground. I'm accustomed to crashing, but if I were a paper airplane, I could count on someone running to pick me up soon, and then I could fly again. But I'm not a paper airplane. There's no one to propel me to fly. There's no one to lift me off the ground when I can no longer keep flying. It all depends on me.

I tend to get lost in these kinds of thoughts when I'm sad. Alone and sad. Sad and alone. As I walk, I find myself, walking without a clear destination. I walk down a straight street, close my eyes, and it extends to the sky. Stars approach and surround the road. I allow myself to keep moving forward and marvel at everything around me. Suddenly, someone shouts my name.

I wake up. I had stopped daydreaming and had started dreaming while asleep. I don't know how long I was like that. So, I get out of bed excitedly and quickly descend the stairs. I search for that voice calling my name. I can't find it, and I stumble. I trip and fall into the abyss. Strange figures surround me. I focus my gaze. Eyes watch me, mouths laugh at me, all caricatured pieces, detached parts of strange faces filling the darkness. I close my eyes and observe myself falling. I approach to take a closer look and see myself with horror. Our pupils freeze in front of each other. Then, I am absorbed by my eyes, not my own, but those of the me in front of me. I enter an infinite loop, a damn spiral. I feel desperation and try to scream. I can't.

I wake up excited once again. My black dress soaked in cold sweat sticks to my skin, suffocating me. My bare feet under the sheets. My heart beating fast. The room immersed in total darkness. I breathe.

Have I finally managed to wake up, or am I still perhaps in that loop that seems to never end? Maybe I have never really been awake, within the reality where everyone seems to exist. I can no longer distinguish what is truly real and what is a dream. However... does it really matter?

I tear off the blankets covering me and get out of bed, afraid of continuing to fall. Afraid that the nightmare has not yet ended. And then I think, do I really want to wake up? Is my reality better than that dream that consumes me?

I start to remember when I was little. Memories that seem so distant. When I sat and watched dust particles flutter within the sunbeams that crossed the window of my room. For some reason, that specific memory calms me. Just like the train journey I take every weekend. Just like watching those landscapes and imagining myself in those forests, breathing calm, inhaling absence, exhaling anguish. Just like sitting on the roof of my old home and watching sunsets and birds pass by.

'Wake up, girl, wake up,' I tell myself. 'Once again, you've become absorbed in your thoughts.'

I look at the clock in front of me. Its hands don't move. Has time stopped? Am I still dreaming? Or has it simply run out of batteries? Suddenly, its hands start moving rapidly counterclockwise, and all my thoughts begin to rewind. I see myself traveling on that train. The coffee I was drinking burns my throat once again and is returned to the cup, which is moved away from my mouth. I leave the seat and go back to the door. All the steps I took to get to that place, I take again, only this time in reverse. I go back down the aisle without being able to look back, without being able to control my own body. The train stops, all the doors open, and I reach my hand toward the one leading to the station, but I am expelled to the one leading to the tracks. A train approaches at full speed towards me. Ropes surround me and tie me to the ground. A scream drowns inside me, I can feel it resonating within my body. I close my eyes, and I am no longer in that place.

No, I no longer feel those bindings that enclosed me. Now I feel the breeze. This time, I perceive multicolored lights passing through my closed eyelids. Now my feet are unfamiliar with what it was like to feel the ground beneath them. I open my eyes and realize that I returned to that road from that dream that feels so distant right now. The stars shine around me once again. They emit lights that gently fluctuate from red tones to greenish, from green to blue, and from blue to yellow. Then purple and then orange. Turquoise, lilac, lime green.

I look back. The road begins to flood with crystal-clear water. Dark hands like tentacles emerge from the water, which is no longer crystal-clear, no, now it's oil-colored. I feel fear. They are coming for me, they want to sink me and take me with them to the depths of that ocean.

I look up. Bright fingers attached to abstract hands, attached to long arms that stretch out looking for me. But everything starts to dilate, distances widen, and the road narrows.

I shout my name. I ask myself to wake up. I'm tired of this surreal reality. I'm bored with this overwhelming uncertainty of what comes next. I beg myself to end all of this.

Then someone hears me and takes me back to the light. To the sunlight making visible the dust particles floating around me. I am returned to the hand propelling me in the air. It holds me and disarms me. I become a dark piece of paper on the table again, only this time I'm not the same paper I was before. This time, I have the folds marked on my skin.