Keys to Happiness

1. Aliah

Since I had been a child, I'd always tended to wake up most nights from my dreams in a flustered state, unsure of where I was or even if I had truly been asleep. This condition didn't necessarily hinder me too much; most of the time I could look around and remember where and when I was. But for the past couple of nights, I had been even more disoriented than usual; my dreams were so vivid, so real that they had no dream-like qualities to them. And if I was honest with myself, which I tried not to be when it came to my dreams, they seemed to be memories that I had long since tried my best to forget.

Tonight I had awoken from my nightly imaginings sweating and panting slightly, as if I had gone for a run around my house's small block. I looked around my room, trying to remember, and my gaze fell to the slightly smaller body lying next to me. I jumped in surprise and then quickly remembered my sister was with me, here to spend the night.
I knew then that this was my reality, and the details of my dream came slowly back to me. This time, I felt it had been eerily familiar; I knew I'd had it before. I was confused, not only because I knew that it had happened, but also because I had worked so hard not to remember anything from that time in my life. Why should it have come back to haunt my dreams?

I had only been seven years old when my mother and I had left my father and moved to New Jersey. The dreams I was having took place a few months before we'd left. Nausea crept bitterly into my stomach and I wished that the memory had stayed forgotten. I wished even more that Daddy had never left us, but what I missed the most was how my mom had been back then, how full of life she had seemed. Although she was a generally happy person, my mom had never been the same after her divorce and even now I could still see the lines of tension on her face whenever my dad was mentioned.

But the dream, it had been somewhat crushing mentally, because it had started out ordinarily enough, they all did. Like any dream I had, I was by myself and walking to somewhere. There was never any specific destination but I would know at some point that I had become lost and would try to stop and ask directions. Despite my efforts, the only people around would be prostitutes working the streets, their pimps glaring at me viciously as I walked by or crack-heads trying to get their next fix.

I would walk past them, still willing to ask someone for help, but they would cuss and yell at me, asking me if I was after a quickie. As I started walking faster in the dream, the crack-heads would follow me, asking for change or sometimes if I wanted a hit on whatever they were smoking. To get away I would start running, almost seeming to fly away from the streets. At this point the dream would change, and I would be sucked into my memory...

I'd just started the third grade back then, and it was already becoming cold outside. Usually I wouldn't have noticed the temperature change; I wasn't usually allowed to play outside in our rough Philly neighborhood. Too many drive-bys my Mom liked to say and my Daddy would nod his head in agreement. I didn't mind not going outside, I liked to play with my dolls, or sit in front of the speakers connected to the radio and listen to music. But today my Mom had said that I should play outside and she had handed me my favorite blue jacket to wear.

As soon as I'd leave the house, I would quickly realize that the jacket was really too thin to wear out in the just barely sixty-degree weather and I would shiver every time a breeze blew over me. I looked around, bored from sitting on the porch by myself. Down the street I'd see some girls from my school and I would be just getting up from the porch step when I'd recognized the laugh of one of the girls. Immediately I'd sit back down dejectedly, feeling confident that I wouldn't be welcomed into their group. Those girls rode my bus every day to and from school, and never hesitated to pull on my plaits or call me names because of my clothes or shoes. Unfortunately, these were the only kids around.

Vaguely, like my thoughts had been hazy even back then, I wondered why my clothes and shoes mattered so much anyway; I wondered why I wanted the girls to like me so much. My feelings and emotions then had been torn between being myself or being who people thought I should be; I felt that I never met anyone's standards but there was nothing I could do to fix it.