How to Love Claire Mason

Dreamland

We are fighting. Poisonous words are flung from angry lips back and forth, back and forth. The lips that we bit to hold in the words we never meant to, never wanted to, never could say, are now spewing out those words at a mile a minute.Everything we have, everything we are, is at stake, in danger. Red lights flashing. Stop! Stop! We have to stop before we crash and burn and are no more. We have to stop before all is lost. We have to stop. We're barely hanging on, but then, suddenly, there is peace. We are still whole. The fight was petty, nothing that couldn't be fixed. I'm still good enough. I'm still worthy of him. I'm still beautiful. He is still mine.

I awaken from this dream, hot and breaking out in a cold sweat, but with a warm feeling inside. It was all an awful, confusing nightmare. We are together still, just as we belong. It is moments before I realize all is lost. The fighting never did stop. But we did. We ended. Because I wasn't good enough. The nightmare is reality.

We kiss in the moonlight, underneath a thousand stars that cannot compare to the sparkle that glints in his eyes when he smiles at me. It is a Nicholas Sparks' novel moment. It is perfect, it is beautiful. We want to make it last forever, forever. Nothing is forever though; all we need is to be together for a long, long time. The amount of time you'd call forever. Yes, that'd be enough. That'd make everything okay. It'd make what happened okay. His lengthy, strong, tan arms encircle my waist. My waist that isn't too big or too small; not to him. I'm perfect to him.

His arms are warm around me; they provide comfort, and security to me, the girl who's middle name is insecure. I feel like I belong there. I have a place in the world. I mean something to someone. I am more than a two digit number that flashes on the screen of my grimy, tear-stained scale. I am more than a reflection in a mirror I wish to break with a swing of my arm. I am worth loving, because I am here in his arms. That is proof enough.

Here, with him, I am weightless. For the first time, I'm on Cloud Nine.

I awake in my bed with a warm sensation in my stomach and around my midsection. I can feel a strong, comforting arm around me, holding me close. I can feel it. He is there.

But no one is there. What at first was a warm sensation is now eeery and ghostly. Why do I feel an arm around me when there is no one, when he is long gone? Is my body still in dreamland? Did my mind leave it behind? I can fucking feel him.

But, inside, I feel nothing. I'm empty. My stomach is empty of food, my heart empty of feeling.

I'm alone in my bed, overcome with the feeling that I always will be. Alone. Empty.

It's a wonder how I manage to drag my body, still paralyzed from the dreams, out of bed and to school each morning after these episodes. The dreams are traumatic; they leave me feeling all the more detached, delusional, and lost.

I know he will be there, every day, in English class. Truly, physically there. Unlike in the dreams. Yet in the dreams he seems more real. But that's not him, in those dreams. It's who I want him to be. That's a fact I have to keep reminding myself of. He isn't the same. That's not him. At least not anymore. Now he is betraying, bipolar...not himself. At least not as I knew him. Maybe I didn't know him at all.

We usually arrive at the classroom door simultaneously, which sucks, considering how much I try to avoid him. I admit sometimes I'm not. I want to be near him, want him to touch me again, as he does in my dreams. Yet I know I can never let him touch me again. Never.

One day, we got to the door at the very same second. Our hands reached for the cold, rusting metal knob at the exact same moment, his large, tanned hand closing in toward my pale, thin one.

He didn't say sorry. He didn't mutter an awkward "excuse me" or step back quickly to let me go first, nor did he push past me to grab the knob himself. Instead, he chuckled. Chuckled. After everything that happened, he fucking chuckled.

"Hi there!" He practically sang, his voice sickeningly upbeat. So fucking uppity. And no, it wasn't in a sarcastic I-really-hate-you-but-I'm-gonna-pretend-I-don't kind of way. It was genuine. I wanted to vomit. I quickly resolved not to respond, not to give him any satisfaction. But I surrendered to it, to him. My will wasn't strong enough to stand against him. I choked out a "hello" before pushing my way into the classroom.

Every day, when I sit in English, his eyes are burning holes through me. Through my clothes though he already knows what lies beneath. Through my skin, which he got under so easily. Through my heart, which he knew just how to break to make it most painful.

I feel like his eyes are always on me. It makes me shiver. All through that period, I am nervous, anxious, self-conscious. I tell myself he surely isn't staring at me; I'm no longer beautiful to him. He isn't judging you, Claire, I tell myself. He's done that enough. Yet I cannot shake the feeling of his eyes always being on me, just as I cannot shake the feeling that he is with me each morning when I wake.

Only in Dreamland is he with me.

Only in Dreamland does he still think I am beautiful.

Only in Dreamland am I worth something.

Only in Dreamland am I whole, and myself, again.