[daydreams]
I’m on stage again, I can feel the lights glaring down on me. Back to my old haunts, I’m singing karaokee at Monster Ronson’s.
I’ve glowed up, shed the extra pounds, found a good job and live abroad finally, right in the heart of the city I learned to love. My gothy punk rock clothes look fantastic on me. My friends cheer along for me, dancing and whooping at my feet. Even my boots are gorgeous.
I’m singing, bent over the microphone as I belt out the words in near perfect pitch, an energetic display of mirth and release. I’m completely enraptured with the music, until my eyes wander from the blur of faces to see a different familiar trio in the back.
They’re hunched over the bar at first, facing away and ordering drinks, until her sister turns and sees me. She almost couldn’t recognize me, but in horror clutches K’s arm who turns her head in disbelief, jaw agape.
“Before youuu, I recognized myself. You tore in two, and now I’m someone else.”
I can see their panic, I feel their confusion. The music keeps playing, but I’ve realized I’ve stopped singing. Our eyes have locked, and while the multi colored disco lights dance around us, I can’t seem to pull away. K swivels, grabs her sister and Z, and Z pushes her to stay, a disgusting grin on her face. She’s sick.
But my friends, they see this. They scale the stairs up, grab the microphone, and keep it going.
“Cause I’m falling, turning black and blue. Befoooore youuu, I… believed.”
Their arms around me keeps me sane. A warm embrace. They’re looking out for me. They love me. They want me to be okay. When I slip up, they step in, they support me. The crowd cheers anyways, and when we descend, I look for those faces. But they’re gone.
— but it didn’t have to be Karaokee. We could be in a restaurant. Walking down the street. Anywhere I’m laughing or having fun, she pulls me out and erases my closure until I’m a shell of myself, at her mercy, discarded to my core. I worried, for a while, that these daydreams were the delusions of grandeur, but so far, they don’t make me better than anyone else. They only serve to process the way she affects me and gauge where I’m at.
Someday, I hope she won’t appear in them anymore. Someday, I hope I have those friends who love me. Someday, I hope I can be where I yearn to be. Living that life - not to show her how far I’ve come, but because it makes me happy. I don’t owe it to her to prove I’m not useless. The only person I’ve got to be good enough for is me.... right? God…
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