Some Faraway Place

by Lauren Shippen

  I know that Emily puts her whole heart into everything she does, I’ve seen it—her intense commitment to school, her writing, her friends, her family—but it stings that being loved by my family came so easily to her. It’s not her fault. I’m not even sure it’s my family’s fault. I’ve never screamed at them, “Pay attention to ME!” and so they haven’t. They’re just doing what they’ve always done—eating my food, being themselves, and tolerating my existence.

  11-25-2016, morningwaffles, text post

  I know you all have been very eager to hear how Thanksgiving with the girlfriend’s family went and … drumroll please … I think it went well! We ate a lot of food and laughed and Daisy’s family was super warm and welcoming and nice. I avoided making a complete ass of myself and even managed to go a whole three hours without talking about how I write porn about fictional characters (you know, THAT conversation that all of us have with the people in our lives eventually) though I actually think her mom might have thought that was cool? I thought Daisy’s mom was cool, so maybe I’m just projecting hopefully.

  Her whole family was cool, honestly. Really relaxed and at home with one another in a way that reminded me of my family, which made my homesickness even worse, but also soothed it in a strange way. But Daisy was … really quiet the whole dinner. It was like our first few dates honestly, like she was trying to hide parts of herself. Maybe she was nervous about me and her family clicking or maybe she was just exhausted from cooking all day. But part of me wonders if the Daisy I met on our first date is the person she is around her family all the time.

  There was one kind of weird moment right at the beginning of the evening though. Not to be totally tinhat, but I think there might be a chance that her brother found this blog? If so … uh, hi? I guess? Daisy said he was really good with computers and I got a distinct “protective older brother” vibe, which was so not what I expected from what Daisy had told me, so maybe he tracked me down online. Right when I got there, he said this stuff about not celebrating the colonizing aspect of Thanksgiving, which is, like, exactly what my last blog post was about? So I don’t know if we’re just similar people thinking about similar stuff or if he read that post and was trying to make me feel comfortable. But, whatever, that really was the only odd thing of the whole dinner. Yeah. That was definitely all.

  Anywho, that’s the life update. I’m going back home in ten days for the holiday break, so Daisy and I won’t see each other for a little while. But this felt like a really big step and I’m … hopeful. I think we might really be something.

  DECEMBER 16TH, 2016

  The monster has teeth. It’s stepped out from the shadows, made itself known and snapped its jaws at the one person who doesn’t deserve its ire.

  It all started this morning when my dad actually yelled at me.

  Part of me is relieved, honestly. That my dad cares enough to yell. That he feels well enough to. Because the possibility looms heavy over our house like a fog—the possibility that I’m going to wake up one day and the person in our house, wearing my dad’s clothes, is someone different. My dad but not quite. My dad but further away, already in a place we can’t reach him.

  But today he really felt like himself. Like he was the same person who gave me the biggest lecture when I snuck in after midnight one night in sophomore year, bloodied and bruised from an ill-advised middle-of-the-night solo rollerblading outing.

  Everything devolved after Thanksgiving. I think we were all surprised by how … nice? It was? To just have a family meal and not think about Atypical stuff or diseases or visions or anything else for a whole day. But when I went to sleep that night, exhausted from a straight day and a half of cooking and the stress of introducing Emily to my family, I stayed asleep. For two days.

  They’re used to it by now—me going to sleep for large chunks at a time. But it’s been freaking them out, I guess. They called my doctors at the AM, who didn’t seem overly concerned. My body processes energy and calories differently when I’m dreamdiving, so they said as long as I’m not getting dehydrated or undernourished, I should be fine. That was cold comfort to my family, but good enough for me. I told everyone I would be more diligent about eating and drinking but that I was totally fine.

  I lied.

  I haven’t fallen asleep without meaning to in … a while. When I woke up briefly Friday morning and thought about going downstairs and spending the day eating leftovers with my family, it all seemed so … dull. Despite the fun of Thanksgiving, reheated turkey and post-holiday lethargy weren’t exactly tempting, especially when I knew I could be riding a dragon and eating what Turkish delight actually should taste like, in the way that it’s described in The Chronicles of Narnia, something good enough to betray your family to the White Witch for, instead of the gummy, gelatinous sugar rush it is in real life.

  So I shut my eyes again. I was thinking I would just dip in, serve myself a delightful feast with food and drink that doesn’t even exist on the regular plane of existence, and then wake myself up and join my family for some real and boring dinner. But time moves differently in the dreamworld and, in all my learning about how to perfectly execute the dreamdiving, I haven’t quite figured out the translation of Dream Time to Real Time and, well, one thing led to another in my dreamfeast and the silverware starting singing, like a scene from Beauty and the Beast and THEN my ten-year-old neighbor fell asleep and he’s got this absolutely wicked imagination where he dreams about these really fun and goofy quests in magical lands, so I got caught up in that for a bit and then Aaron was dreaming about computer code (the nerd) and I got to jump into a Matrix-style thriller and then I was feeling antsy and I flew for a while but then I realized that a few hours had probably passed and I woke myself up and it was twenty-six hours later.

  I didn’t think anyone in my family would understand all of that though, so I kept it to myself, pretending like I’d just made a mistake. Slipped up. That seemed to appease them for the time being but …

  Okay, so. That’s happened a few more times. Since Thanksgiving. And with my family’s seeming lack of concern about me sleeping two entire days away, I figured, what’s the harm? Well, this morning, I was ambushed by my dad in the kitchen.

  “Look who’s joined the land of living,” he said. I looked over to the kitchen table, to see him staring at his cup of coffee, a newspaper open under his elbows sitting on the table. He was definitely speaking to me—Aaron and my mom were nowhere to be seen—but he wasn’t looking at me.

  “It’s…” I looked toward the microwave clock. “Eight thirty. Aaron sleeps in later than that almost daily. I assume that’s where he is right now,” I added for good measure.

  “Yes, but Aaron was actually awake for some of yesterday, which can’t be said for every member of this household.”

  I recognized that tone of voice. There’s always so much talk about “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed” being mom-speak, but our mom just comes right out and tells us when she’s mad. It’s my dad who will sound disapproving and let down, in just the right way to make you feel like the worst person in the world.

  “Oh,” I said, unsure if there was any right thing I could say in this moment that would let me off the hook. I was also, legitimately, a little surprised. I’d thought it was Wednesday morning—the last thing I remember being sometime midday on Tuesday—but glancing at the sports section of the newspaper that was on the counter told me it’s currently Thursday.

  “Oh?” my dad asked, finally looking up at me, his eyes wide. I turned to pour myself a cup of coffee. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said, not really sounding it. “I’m not going to apologize for a medical condition I have.”

  I really thought I’d had him there. He, more than anyone else, should understand that different expectations and accommodations need to be made for people like us that have something we’re battling against. And maybe he would have given me a break if that was what was goi
ng on. But, like always, he saw through my bullshit.

  “You’re not falling asleep at the drop of a hat anymore,” he said, clearing his throat. “You’re choosing it. We know you are. You’re choosing to sleep through everything, to spend all your time in that other place.”

  I hadn’t expected that. He said it so coldly, clinically, and my mind instantly jumped to interventions that I’d seen on TV shows. But Aaron and my mom weren’t there, there was no banner hung over the kitchen table, just me and my dad and slightly burnt coffee, staring each other down.

  “And why shouldn’t I?” I asked.

  “Because that’s now how this is supposed to work, Rose,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me how my own ability works,” I said, taking a step toward him. “I know what I’m doing. I have perfect control over it—”

  He scoffed, closing the newspaper.

  “It’s true!” I insisted. “I can do whatever I want in there!”

  “Maybe you don’t need better control over your ability itself,” he said, “but over how you use your ability.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He sighed and stood up, coming to stand directly in front of me, his most serious Dad face on.

  “I think it’d be good for you to do another stay at the AM,” he said.

  “What??” I yelped.

  “Rose—”

  “No, no,” I shouted, shaking my head. “I don’t need to go back there!”

  Why, oh why, did I shout at him? What kind of unrepentant monster shouts at their sick father when all he’s trying to do is help?

  “Rose, I really think it’s for the best!” he said, stern but not matching my volume. How do I do that? How do I conquer the skill of speaking strongly, assertively, without my voice rising in level and pitch, without it feeling like my words are barbed wire pouring out of my mouth and wrapping around the limbs of the people I’m directing them to? In the dreamworld I never have this problem. I shout and scream, with joy and with fear, I laugh loudly and without shame, and the sound is carried up on that soft breeze that’s always there, made of light and music, keeping everything in balance. Even me. Why can’t real life be like that? Why can’t real life feel like a place where your voice is always at the right volume, always perfectly poised to be heard in exactly the way that you want?

  “No one else does!” I said. “Aaron is god knows where, there’s no way he cares about this, and Mom hates the AM—”

  “You know they don’t appreciate people with your mother’s ability—” My dad sighed, a wrinkle forming in between his eyebrows as he pleaded with me.

  “Exactly, so what do they know!” I yelled. “I don’t need them—”

  “I don’t understand,” my dad said, blinking at me. “Did something happen in your first round? Something you haven’t told us about?”

  “Oh, you mean, besides feeling like a freak among freaks?” I spat. “Besides falling asleep in the middle of therapy or going walking inside someone’s head during group and having people think less of you because you’re not the perfect Atypical in perfect control?”

  “Rose,” he started, so soothing and gentle, “people there understand better than anyone how difficult it is to control an ability, especially when it’s new. They know what they’re doing—”

  “No, they don’t!” I shouted. “They don’t know how to fix you!”

  He didn’t have any rebuttal to that. I’m not sure what I would have wanted to hear, or how I expected him to react. I know I wasn’t expecting him to look … defeated. He had an answer for everything—for every reason I didn’t want to go, for what I should do on my first date with Emily, for how I should approach Chef about a promotion. My dad always had the answer. And he let Aaron and me get away with stuff, would goof around with me, encourage risky flambé experiments, but he always knew where to draw the line. He called us on our bullshit.

  I just wanted him to call me on my bullshit. I wanted him to say, “Actually, you’re wrong, you need to go back to the AM, to trust them, because they’re working on a fix for me. They’ve got it all figured out.” But he didn’t say that at all.

  “Rose,” he said softly, “I know it’s frustrating, dealing with me like this—”

  “What?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’d understand if you were all at the end of your patience,” he said. “I know I am. Not being able to work very much anymore, forgetting conversations we’ve had—”

  “Dad, no one is frustrated with you,” I interrupted. “That’s—how could you think that?”

  The sadness on his face turned to confusion.

  “Then why have you been avoiding me?”

  “What?” My question barely came out, getting caught in my throat in shock.

  “I assumed that’s why you weren’t around,” he explained. “You don’t want to watch your old man fade away.”

  “Dad, don’t talk like that,” I pleaded. “You’re not fading away. I know that you sometimes forget where your book is or why you went into a room, but that happens to all of us sometimes!”

  I was trying to make it sound like no big deal at all, like it was the most casual problem in the world, but I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. Why do I always cry right when I don’t want to?

  “I know it’s going to get worse,” I continued, gritting the words out and quickly moving on to the next thought, “but you’re not—I mean, you’re doing great. And we’re going to be here whatever happens. If it gets worse, then we’ll be here. And it won’t be frustrating for us.”

  “If it gets worse?” he asked, his face completely collapsed. “Rose, it already has.”

  I wanted to ask what he meant but I couldn’t get the words out. How much had I missed?

  “You’ve slept through a lot of things, Rose,” he said, answering the question I was too afraid to ask.

  A tear escaped my eye, rolling down my cheek. I didn’t want to wipe it away, didn’t want to bring attention to it, but I didn’t think there was any way my dad didn’t notice. But he didn’t make any moves to comfort me, to bring me into a hug like he would have normally. Instead he just said:

  “Please go to the AM, Rose. For me.”

  And he grabbed his coffee cup and walked out of the kitchen.

  I should have told him yes, okay, fine, I’ll do whatever will make him happy, whatever will make him smile and tease me again. I should have immediately apologized for yelling. I should have told him I love him.

  I should have told him about the dream I’d walked in last week, the one where he was back there, sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting, waiting, waiting, so filled with dread and hopelessness that they were almost physically manifested Dream Things. I was trapped in that dream with him, so scared to have the doctor come in, scared he never would, filled with a terrible anticipation of what was next and also the deep certainty that the AM couldn’t help. I should have told him that I tried everything—for what felt like hours—to change his dream, bring him to Fenway or to one of the spy novels he loves so much, but I couldn’t. There was a fog around every part of his dream, around every part of him, and I couldn’t get a solid hold on anything.

  But I didn’t say any of that to him. So I guess I’ll be going back to the AM.

  Ralphy said I’d be back. Guess I should have listened.

  community/TheUnusuals post by n/thatsahumanperson

  I’ve been trying to take n/tacotacotaco’s advice and actually talk to my sister but literally all she is doing is sleeping. Granted, we’ve all kind of been running around to get ready for the holidays and I’m in a crunch for my current work project (I think I, fingers crossed, FINALLY have this remote freelancer thing worked out), but I think she’s sleeping for practically days at a time, only waking up to eat and have water. I don’t even know how she can handle it physically—she’s always been a pretty active person, she loves Rollerblading and cooking and was even starting to get into yoga
this past summer, and now she’s spending most of her hours every day catatonic in her bed.

  Does anyone know of any dreamdivers that have had this problem? What the hell do I do?

  tacotacotaco

  You know, a lot of people do the program a few times—there’s no shame in your sister returning to That Place to get additional help. All that sleeping definitely … does not sound healthy.

  thatsahumanperson

  Yeah, I know. She only did two weeks there—I did a lot more and I don’t think I would have come out the other side with nearly as much control as I did if I had only done two weeks. I think I need to talk to my parents.

  franklinsteinsmonster

  So there are, like, levels and stuff? A bunch of different ways you can do a program?

  tacotacotaco

  Yep, there are literally “tiers.” Each tier is for different intensity of ability or stage of control—the higher the tier number, the more rigorous the program.

  thatsahumanperson

  Right. I did tier 2—was there for eight weeks. A lot of individual talk therapy, group therapy, training my ability, medical check-ins, etc. It kind of felt like what I imagine army boot camp would be like, just without the toxic masculinity and trumped-up patriotism.

  franklinsteinsmonster

  Like the beginning bit of Mulan where they’re all training.

  thatsahumanperson

  Ha, yeah, exactly. Except you’re surrounded by a bunch of people who can do things like make fire and move objects with their mind.

  franklinsteinsmonster