Vicious Cycles

Chapter 4

           We had made it back to my dorm room, and my floor was oddly silent. It was completely deserted as if everyone who was living there had either gone into hiding or decided that this was the night to go out. All the better, I thought. I’d rather not have them see me in the condition that I was in. There was this bizarre chill that had come over me the entire time I was walking. And it wasn’t from the cold. Somewhere along the way, Cole had noticed that I was shivering and had draped his jacket over my shoulders. It was a nice gesture and his jacket was warm, but it didn’t do much to distance the inner chill I felt. The cold that was originating from what I had seen.

            Having Cole there was definitely helpful because it gave me someone to lean on as I tried to piece together what I had just experienced. It was completely inexplicable, and I couldn’t say that I dealt well with inexplicable. Because there was already so much that was unexplained in my life and I didn’t need more. My insomnia, the random bursts of pain, and now these unusual dreams. It made absolutely no sense and I tried to calm myself down enough to actually breathe slowly, but my breaths were shallow and labored.

            Opening the door to my dorm room, I made my way over to the bed, and Cole sat down next to me. The concern was obvious and I knew that after the way I had been acting, like a person who had just seen a ghost, there was no way that I was going to get out of this one without explaining myself. The lights in my room remained off but the little moonlight that streamed through the window did enough to illuminate the features of the man sitting next to me. I sighed, and slowly calmed myself down. The familiarity of the setting made the task easier, and I shut my eyes for a few moments, trying to gather my thoughts, and also trying to figure out what I was going to say to Cole.

            He didn’t press for answers to the questions that his eyes were asking, and instead sat silently beside me as I worked through the night’s events myself. When I thought about Isaac, I could suddenly smell the alcohol again but that was the least of my concerns. Taking a deep breath, I spoke in a low voice; it was resigned as I began to confess my secrets.

            “I know you’re wondering what happened. And honestly Cole, I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea what is happening to me, or what has been happening to me ever since I was born. Nothing in my life has ever been normal and I have no idea what to expect from it anymore.” I turned to face him, trying to read his expression, but I couldn’t. Because there was nothing more than concerned curiosity and intrigue in his features. His eyes prompted me to continue, revealing that he wanted to listen to more of the story. “I’ve always had this extremely vivid imagination, as my teachers put it. I would see things. Horrible things. And it’s not in the freaky way where I would see the future or something. It’s just... my dreams were never rainbows and unicorns. Let’s leave it at that.”

            I decided to avoid mentioning that since I was a kid, I had been dreaming about death. The death of the same girl, over and over again. It wasn’t a recurring dream because the location and the death itself were always changing, but the outcome always remained the same. She would die, and I would wake up screaming. “Anyways, because of my nightmares, I could never go to sleep. I never got any good sleep at least. My parents took me to see various doctors and psychiatrists and the whole nine yards, but it didn’t matter. Because everyone we went to told me the same thing; she’s absolutely healthy and there’s nothing wrong. So I started to believe them and wanted to make my parents believe that too. I told them everything was fine, and I tried so desperately to believe it. But as I got older, the dreams got more real. They became more frequent and more violent. And,” I paused, not realizing just how much I had told him. But it was like I needed to release all my years of pent up confusion and pain and sadly, Cole was the only one there at the moment.

            “And once I got to high school, that’s when the migraines started. There was a constant throbbing in my mind that went away for sometime, but always managed to come back. They were the worst in the morning. But I couldn’t tell anyone. My parents had finally accepted that I was really okay and we had only just started to become a semi functional family again without me springing another illness on them. So I just repressed it all through high school and never told them. Back there, the same thing happened. It was just one of my migraines. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and well, I guess I was just tired and it’s just been a rough night.” I finished, looking down, surprised at how calm I sounded.

            I didn’t look up but I felt his hand on mine and a small, somber smile crept onto my face. He didn’t say anything, but just held my hand for a few minutes before letting go. I wanted to say thanks, but I felt that it was assumed. I didn’t even realize that somehow I had ended up telling him everything; everything that I had kept hidden for years from even my closest of friends, I had told Cole. And he didn’t say he understood or that he could imagine what I was going through. Because as tiny as it might have been, it meant a lot to me that he just listened to me and digested what I said, rather than trying to make me feel better about my situation.

            “What are they about?” he inquired, and I looked up at him, his face blank. I licked my lips, not knowing what to say. There was only so much I could tell him. “I don’t…I don’t remember exactly. I just remember waking up petrified and convinced I was never going back to sleep. They were just horrible.” I said, lying but not completely. Because they were horrible and I always did wake up screaming. That was until I trained myself to keep quiet, not scream when I had a bad dream. Because the screaming would give me away, would sell me out and my secret would no longer remain a secret.

            I mustered up the best smile I could, but only half my mouth would comply. “I mean, it’s getting better now. I’m sleeping better just a few nights, it’s hard.” I lied. But it was obvious he wasn’t going to buy into the lie. He was smart, smart enough to know that I was lying. But he was also smart enough to know that I wanted to think that I had convinced him, and that I wasn’t going to worry him in the future. So he nodded and replied with a “good.” I smiled at him, thankful that he had indulged me and though we both knew Cole didn’t believe me, it was nice to deceive myself into thinking he did.

            He got up, and my hand suddenly felt cold. I hadn’t realized that the entire time, his hand had still been resting on mine, but now that it was no longer there, I could feel the chill of the air around us. “I’ll go. You should try and sleep.” He said, in an almost cautious way. I couldn’t help but smile and stood up and strode to him, and gently placed my arms around him, in a hug. “Thank you.” I said, even though to me, it didn’t seem enough. He hugged back and mumbled something about it not being a big deal and pulled away. I broke the hug and after bidding me a good night, he left. And I was alone with my own thoughts and my own words. I was alone with myself, and the nightmares were less frightful than that.