Realities

1

Sometimes I think it's all a dream. Sometimes a really good dream and sometimes a nightmare, but still only a dream. It all happened so long ago, a lifetime ago, a million lifetimes ago and yet it was just so recent. I'm rambling I'm so confused. Reality of what is and what used to be mixes itself up in my mind and it's hard for me to tell the difference. I guess that's why I'm here. The realities don't really mix well for me.

I was institutionalized for the benefit of myself and society they say. They, just who are they? I've often wondered who they were. But once more I digress.

Once life was different. I was considered normal, although I'm not sure what normal is either. Just one of several billion people on this planet. Just living my life and dealing with things as they happened. Like most 'normal' people I suppose.

Then one day everything changed. It was a normal day for me. The sun was shining and it was a lovely spring day. The trees were leafing and the flowers were starting to bloom. The snow was almost completely gone and the grass was green from the snow melt. I love spring and the renewal of life it brings.

It was warm but not too warm and I had decided to go outside and enjoy the lovely spring weather. The birds were singing their mating songs and the insect life was minimal so no annoying mosquitoes as I let the warm sun soak into me.

I've been sick and haven't been able to tolerate the outdoors much. Of course I've never really tolerated winter well. The cold is better than the intolerable heat of summer though.

I don't know maybe this is really where the dream began rather than where my reality changed? They tell me this never happened, the spring day yes, but what happened next didn't. It was just a dream that seemed so real that it was like reality.

Now I've had realistic dreams. Who hasn't? But this wasn't the same. This was me living a whole other life, a different life than the one I'm currently living. And in that one I awoke from my dream that I was dreaming.

The sound was unreal. Gun fire and mortars firing. I look up in shock. The scene had changed, but was the same. Same location, but the houses weren't there but the two opposing enemies firing at each other were. I sit up in fright. I can even smell the gunpowder. I see the lines drawn up on either side of me.

They say in dreams you can't smell or see color. Well if this was a dream as they say it was then they are wrong. Dead wrong. I see the blood of the fallen. I smell the smell of death mixing with the smell of gunpowder. The smell of the bodies that had already started to decompose. It makes me start retching.

The fighting never stops. It's almost like they don't see me there. I somehow don't get hit, but I do see the ground send up flying bits of earth as the bullets hit the ground nearby. I'm trapped with no place to go, no safety in sight. I pull myself into a tight ball and fight the tears that want to fall. I am lost. I tell myself that it's all a dream and try to wake myself up, but it's no use, as far as my body is concerned I am awake.

I fell asleep in the peaceful spring day of my reality and wake up into a nightmare. Ironic huh? At any moment I fully expected to have my body to be riddled with bullets or a mortar land near enough that it tears my body apart. But that didn't happen.

"Who the hell are you?" A surprised male voice says as he nearly walks over me.

I'm too terrified to answer at this point and can only stare at him frozen in fear. He grunts in disgust. "Come on then girl, this is no place to be for anyone." The man grabs my arm and hauls me up. "Keep your head down. How in the hell have you managed to not get hit? Careful stay near me.  That's right keep going." He cajoles me and questions me to keep me going but doesn't wait for answers to his questions. That's just as well since I didn't have any answers for him any way.