At a point in life, I am confronted by a dream. It seemed persistent so I welcomed it for as long as it needed to say what it wanted. The following takes place during several days; pieced together from segments cut short during the night. The only thing I know in those moments is pain. After it passes I go back to sleep. Never does the dream come twice in a night. I mention this only to describe it from the outside as well as the vulnerable inside it offered to me, because this dream is different… it feels alive.
In a dark place, two people are sitting opposite each other at a kitchen table during what I would describe as an awkward moment in a relationship that seems like a lifetime of friendship. I know they are deeply connected by the eye contact shared between them, in which discomfort and sadness are shown unashamed and unguarded. I know this moment is skewed and twisted by observing the kitchen itself. Its claustrophobic walls seem to be closing in on the two while they are not looking. Such is this sad room, with one small window letting in light just between them. Even thou the day outside shines bright, the light manages to get through streams as a narrow pillar just enough to burn everything in its limited path, while the rest of the room is outlined by the harsh shadows that result from it.
No words are spoken up to this point, but the room speaks to me even so.
It begs me for a resolution. Pushed towards the man on the right I assume his voice.
“So…” I say in concern for my friend. “How have you been doing?’”
His figure shifts on the uncomfortable wooden chair as if being restricted, his eyes choose their direction carefully as if being watched. In the end, they focus on me, and his body relaxes. it seems he finds comfort in me.
“This place is eating me alive.” he whispers. “I feel like a man already dead so I can not talk to you, but I am doing it still so it feels wrong. My desire compels me to speak and embrace you, my friend. You are my only family. Yet it is corrupted by the fact that I know I shouldn’t.”
He then leans over the table so close that he can whisper in a voice so soft that by the end it almost no longer exists: “Let me tell you then a story of a dead man.”
As the voice fades so do the walls that restrict him and I find myself being the dead man, on a street bathed only in unobstructed bright light, where a home once stood. Crying in remembrance of the family it once housed. Long ago, I built a life here investing in it everything I had. Now it is gone. But as I come to grips with my sorrow I raise my head and realize that the house is still standing.
Defined by the ones around us we strive to build a home of acceptance. To become men reflected in loving eyes. We may think that our minds and bodies define us as people, but it is in fact our home that shapes us.
I enter into a beautiful family full of love, laughter, and light. Welcomed, cherished, and seen. They gather around me in an embrace and after the warmth of the hug fills our bodies with a sense of belonging, they ask me never to leave them. A smile that may be bigger than any I have ever managed to produce ensures them: “Why would I ever leave you?!”
I swear to protect This from that which means to enter. The door bound to all but me who vow to stand beside it. Its guard dog with a heavy promise weighing on my shoulders. As I realize the difficulty of this task I turn back to my home determined to do it regardless. It is all that matters. So again I step outside to provide for them, as it is the only way to keep us strong.
In the World, I am met by a man determined to tell me a story of how he feeds a monster. How every day he brings it pray stupid enough to walk right into its mouth.
“With no trick mind you! It knows its fate yet still it marches this path.” exclaims the man proudly, with most of it being directed toward this conclusion: “But not anymore! Today is the last time I go willingly to be eaten. For I have no strength left to give it.” Considering such an end victory, the man smiles. His pride at its peak, he starts walking to his destiny.
As I return at day’s end to see the house, I am overcome by the story still, as in its place I see a monster. Two windows that decorate its face are eyes directing its stares at me. They bear the faces of my family. The door is a mouth that I open willingly to enter and offer myself to the bowls of its interior.
This lingering moment soon passes as I am welcomed by the warm embrace of my family. “Never leave us again.” they ask of me, and yet again I promise: “Never will I leave you!”
The following day I searched the streets for the man to return to him the dark tale. To give him the one of my family and send him on his way with one full of light.
But he never returns.
Every day I do the same, I leave held briefly by the plea “Never to leave” and sustained by that light I look for the man. Each day a bit more restricted by an ever-creeping truth that he is gone.
Every day when I return, the monster comes back strengthened by every previous day it came before then. The power of their embrace weakens as every time the monster stays a little longer.
Some time ago it began to remain even after passing its mouth.
When I enter the house now, I see the walls twist and skew as intestine. And I am only a piece of food sitting there, being willingly digested. After a time I can not take it anymore so I start to leave the house sooner than before.
I no longer stay enough to hear the plea anymore.
I no longer have a story to share with that man, so I stop looking. Instead, I go home and enter the smirking monster’s belly. In there while being digested I roam those narrow halls searching for my family. Every now and then I find them, but I am no longer the man they knew so I tell them a story of one that once was, hoping they don’t take the same path as I did.
Stepping into that kitchen and finding them, I remember why I forgot:
I am the man on the left side of the table, I am a monster.
A home of guilt built brick by brick, within a dream’s nightmare. In it, I beg for absolvation from the horrors that took place within me. I am a house, not a home.
“You are not a house” answers the right man. “You are My home.”
A point in the distance we strive to reach when lost in elements. Destination. What happens to men when that point no longer exists? It saddens me to carry such a memory, but not if I can share it with someone else.
Our home was infested with this sickness. Problems of the world pushing down on us, seeping into my family like poison. So the house kept screaming in pain, “No more!” it cried and begged for my attention. Consumed by the guilt of what happened here, it didn’t want to be just the walls that hid us, it longed to be Home again. But it couldn’t do it alone. It needed for someone to listen; someone to say “It wasn’t your fault!”
I may often curse my life for being the way I am, but these are the times that I’m grateful for not being less, and strive to be even more. I was just the right person to help.
