I was told that I would meet her one night.
One night on the first night of a full moon.
Who is she? I have not the vaguest idea just as I have no idea who I was and who I am. I was told that she was born on a month where three full moons took place. She was born at a time when the sun was halfway sinking into another world and the moon was emerging, halfway surfacing from where the sun left off, filling the gap, maintaining the balance.
What a nice time to be born, I thought.
I was told to do the same thing to her like what I did to the other Lights that I have dealt with. I have to say that I’m quite good at my job but only this time it never dawned on me that she had the ability to prove me wrong. But I was too stupid to understand then. I could not understand that what I did was something that I never should have done. There was no room for excuses.
But back then, stupid as I am, what could I do? I was far from being human even if I do look like one. As I watch the world and all the creatures living in it share the same air, I can’t help but dream and think to my thoughts’ extent. Soon, sadly, reality brought me back to my senses.
What good would my dreaming do if I can’t feel anything at all?
What good would these countless dreams and thoughts do if I only keep them to myself, if there is zero possibility of them coming true?
Dreams are dreams, after all. There’s no other way to put them. No other words to describe them.
As much as my thoughts go, my dreams started to present themselves upon me. When I dream, I could go all the way, I can do almost anything, everything. Whenever I dream, I can be who I want to be and somehow, along the lines, I started to think that dreaming might be the only thing that I’m good at.
Whenever I dream, I feel like nothing could ever go wrong. All the difficulties that I face would just disappear even if it means that I’m weak, even if it means that I’m living a boring, non-existent life.
Just then, I learned something.
I learned that if I try to use these dreams as my fuel for living, one day, unfortunately, I’m going to find myself burning.
One day.
Like anyone else in this strange round world, I too, have a story to tell.
A story about what?
I have no idea.
Maybe, just maybe, when I have written the very last word only then will I know what kind of story it is.
Probably.
But I can tell you this much: it started with a cup and a coffee in it.
Now, I warn you.
When you are alone in the dark, sitting, thoughts running round and round inside your head and you happen to have a cup of coffee in front of you, be careful.
In fact, be very careful.
If the coffee starts to ripple on its own with no apparent reason and when you start to hear a soft spark of static–
Leave!
Run before he can make you risk one thing in your life that may cost you everything.
Leave!
Run as fast as you can before you can have the chance to trade all that you are in exchange for nothing.
Leave if you still want to remain human.
I’m telling you this not because I have learned how to be kind or that I don’t want you to experience what I had to go through. I’m doing this because I just feel like it.
Now, I blame it all on the moment.
What happened to me was something that was meant to happen to me alone, not to you or anyone else. I was sitting in the dark with a coffee right before me, young and innocent, indifferent to the world. The coffee rippled and I heard a strange sound.
I didn’t know back then. No one warned me.
I was not able to leave, remained rooted to where I was sitting and because of this, I became a Night Diver.
The nights that have passed drowned me, it seems. It could be that I drowned in an ocean or a well.
Who knows?
And just as I have drowned, a strange feeling overwhelmed me to my core.
A feeling that I am no longer myself.
Perhaps I did not even drown but instead I was swallowed.
By what?
I fear to know.
I do not know when or where this strange feeling took hold of me. Maybe it happened while I was fast asleep or perhaps it’s happening right now.
Yes, right at this very moment.
I breathed the darkness that I can see around me as I listened to the silence whispering in my ears. My new-found heart beats steadily, thumping inside my chest, pumping blood.
Is this what it feels like to be human?
Is this what humans feel?
I have never felt this kind of steady warmth before but a thought struck me that somehow, along my long forgotten past, I might have been a real human myself and this warmth that I feel is something that takes place everyday, naturally.
But how could I possibly know?
I have long abandoned the search for my past. The heart that is beating madly inside my chest right now does not give me even the slightest taste of nostalgia and this made me realize that just when I was over chasing after who I was, regret took place.
If only, I thought.
If only my memories did not betray me then perhaps I can, little by little, remember my past and see that I used to have a heart. Right now all I can do is jump into a series of hopeless confusions of what I want to believe because this self-inflicted idea that I used to have a heart appears to be strong. I can’t help myself but enjoy in its continuous beating against the night bathed in silence.
I wonder if this is just a dream.
If so, then I don’t want to wake up. I don’t really matter to the world anyway. I’m just a piece of something who’s bound to do things like breaking people and taking away their shadows.
But what if this is not a dream?
Then I’ll just continue to lie here in the dark until I have managed to assure myself that this is not a dream.
I might be dreaming too much for my own good.
Too much that I can no longer handle it. Endlessly, everyday, I dream to the point that it seems as if it took over reality, as if reality is just some lame idea.
But then again, isn’t this just a state of mind?
I wonder if humans, at some point in their lives, experience this too. Now that I have a heart, a heart that she gave me, I can’t seem to cope with the loneliness that comes with it. I soon realized that dreaming alone can drive you to a point where you can no longer let it go, until there’s no road left for you to turn.
You’re stuck there.
In the corner.
You’re shivering, hopeless, helpless.
And you no longer know where to go from there.
Engrossed.
I came to a point where I want to fully immerse myself in my dreams. I could leave everything, abandon everything and just let myself dream over and over again. I thought that if I could just forget about the memories that were stolen from me and the fact that they were stolen and instead compensate the loss with dreams then I’ll be able to live just fine.
But I was wrong.
Just as I was wrong with a lot of things.
How complicated it is to be human.
I turned bitter and hatred took over me. I never thought that having a heart would hurt so much. I never thought that this would happen to me.
Dreams.
My dreams have blinded me just as I thought that having a heart would save me.
The warmth that I feel transformed into something different, something remorseful.
Something ugly.
Is this what being human means?
Lonely, desperate, angry, foolish?
Then, as if by reflex, I started to dream again about how I used to be before I met her, before she gave me a heart until it shook me that I’m dreaming all over again.
There’s only one thing to do now.
One thing that will end this and make everything fall into place. One thing to do.
Go back.
Go back to the point where I first met her and go over the things that took place since then. Go back and recall all the words that were spoken, all the events that took place and the road that brought me to this dark corner. Go back even if it means sitting in the dark with a cup of coffee right before me and wait.
Wait until it starts to ripple on its own.
AliceInMyHead 