Because of the anonymity of this place, I’ve been pretending like I can say and do anything and there’s no consequence. But there has been a consequence in that I’m not saying any of this stuff to the people who need to hear it. So I’m going to try to change.
Basically, the tldr is this: I think I’m going to be spending less time on here. I’m not leaving entirely—I really value this community and I’m happy to still be our resident web designer, but I can’t let it be a substitute for in-life connection anymore. The connections I’ve made here, the support I’ve found, is as real as real life, and so important to me, but I need to find a balance. Human connection can exist outside of the internet and outside of people’s thoughts. I think I forgot that for a while.
Stay strange, community/TheUnusuals. I’ll see you around.
JUNE 16TH, 2017
Today is my twentieth birthday.
I decided to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground—no party, no big to-do. Emily was back in Arizona for the summer, with a promise that we’d make a point to talk every week. My parents were both working today, so I was going to make my own birthday cake. But as I was gathering together the ingredients, Aaron came into the kitchen, a determined look on his face.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re going for a drive.”
Without thinking about it, I got into the car. We didn’t speak, I didn’t ask where we were going, just looked at the open road and all the lush, green trees that were in full summer bloom. Eventually, watching the roads pass, familiar landmarks entering the rearview, I realized where we were going.
There’s a river, just outside of Boston, that we would go to when we were kids. Our dad would take us, fishing rods in hand, and we’d sit on an old bridge—one from, like, the Revolutionary War or whatever—and pretend that we were going to catch something. But really, we were just there to sit in the sun, catch the breeze off the water, and enjoy the peace of being outside with no clear purpose.
That was what Aaron and I did today. We just sat.
“Thanks for this,” I said, my legs swinging over the edge of the bridge.
“I needed to get out too,” he said, before leaning back to grab something from his bag. “Twizzler?” he asked, revealing a packet of them. I grinned.
“Yeah, sure.”
We sat there for a moment before I clocked the phrasing of what he’d said, but I couldn’t find it in me to be annoyed that he’d read my thoughts. I’d dumped out all my thoughts and feelings onto him, so nothing felt private anymore. Now it was kind of nice that I had an older brother who just … knew.
“Does it ever get lonely?” I asked. “Hearing people’s thoughts but not having them hear yours?”
He didn’t seem surprised by the question, but stopped to consider it for a moment, gnawing on a Twizzler stalk.
“Yeah, it does. But, I don’t know, I guess I’m used to being lonely,” he said. “Just being what we are—being Atypical—it’s … it’s kind of lonely.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I think that’s why … I mean, I thought that the dreamworld was it, you know? I thought that that was what I was supposed to be doing. After all, why have this ability if I don’t use it? Being this way has to have some, I don’t know, some meaning.”
“I don’t think we have these abilities for any reason other than random genetic chance,” he said, biting into another Twizzler.
“Yeah, I know, I know. But still—it felt like the right thing. It felt like that’s where the answers were.”
“I get that,” he said. “I mean, I can read people’s minds, I thought that was the answer to everything for a while.”
“But doesn’t it help you connect?” I asked. “I mean, despite the loneliness, surely it makes things make sense. Makes people make sense.”
“Yeah, I guess sometimes it can,” he said. “But people think a lot of stuff that they don’t mean. That they don’t believe. And people sure as hell dream that stuff. It’s about your actions. At the end of the day, that’s what matters.”
“I guess.”
“That’s what makes you different from Damien, Rosie,” he said, that faraway look on his face.
“Ugh.” I groaned. “Stop reading my thoughts.”
“Am I wrong?” he asked, turning his stare to me. “Isn’t that what you’re afraid of?”
“Yeah, can we not rehash the very intense heart-to-heart we had that night?” I asked.
“Of course.” He chuckled. “Trust me, I don’t exactly want to relive that either.”
“Good.” I took another bite of a Twizzler and sighed deeply.
“I’m scared of missing connections,” I said. “Of missing my chance with someone.”
“I thought you and Emily had worked everything out,” he said and I sighed again.
“Yeah, we have. Or, at least, we’re going to keep working everything out,” I added, reminding myself that nothing was ever really complete, no relationship ever not in need of tending. My new therapist has been teaching me that.
“Then what is it?”
“What do you think?” I asked lightly, and Aaron nodded knowingly.
I don’t think he even needed to read my thoughts to understand that I was talking about Dad. And I didn’t need to go into his dreams to know that he felt the same. That we’d had our chances to really connect with our dad and we spent our teenage years being angsty and distant and then getting wrapped up in our own Atypical drama. And now the time was running out. We could do better now, but we’d never get back that time.
“Maybe it’ll work, Rosie,” Aaron said softly. “Maybe that Dr. Sharpe person will figure it out and we’ll get more time with him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”
We drove home with the windows down, the hot wind whipping through the car, chapping our faces, but feeling better for its realness than any breeze I could conjure in a dream.
JUNE 30TH, 2017
Tonight I dreamed of enormous trees. Their branches stretched over me, protecting me, their roots going deep into perfect, glistening, blue-green water. Salt and pine soaked my skin as I flew over the water, skimming the surface until I came to a clearing, every blade of grass perfect and green. I landed gently on a large tree root, flowers blossoming up from it, kissing me with their soft petals and sweet perfume.
I had been there before. This was a place that was familiar to me, deep in my bones familiar. Not because it was real, but because it belonged to someone who belonged to me.
“Rose!”
I turned around to see my mother looking at me in surprise, like she hadn’t expected to find me here. Which … fair.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, moving toward her. We hugged, something we’d only done in grief and fear in real life lately. But this was a hug of joy, of belonging. I can still feel it now, wrapping around me, an all-encompassing warmth.
“It’s been a while since you’ve been here,” she said, her smile brighter and freer than she’s able to give in the real world.
She came to sit next to me on the tree root, the grass humming in perfect harmony under her bare feet as she walked.
“I … I haven’t been in Dad’s head at all,” I told her, it being easier in here than anywhere else.
“Why not?” she asked, no judgment in her voice.
“It hasn’t felt like the right time,” I said. “I want to give him something nice, make sure he has good dreams, but I just … I wanted to fix it.
“I wanted to fix it so badly,” I whispered, embarrassed. “And I couldn’t.”
“I know, sweetheart.” My mom wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into her shoulder. I hugged her back, seeking answers in her arms.
“I’m not going to stop trying,” I promised. “If there’s a way to help him, I’m going to find it. And then I’m going to give him the best, most fantastical dreams I could ever make up.”
“You can’t wait, pumpkin,” she whispered. “You can’t wait for everything
to be perfect to start.”
She pulled back from me, putting her hands on my shoulders so she could look right at me.
“The future is just some faraway place, Rose,” she said. “It’s like this place.”
Her eyes moved around, taking in her surroundings. I followed her gaze, trying to see my world—or her world, our world, whatever this shared dream was—through her eyes. The large, lush trees, with leaves as big as horses, branches that sparkled and bent of their own volition, reaching down to touch the ground like a kiss, the grass stretching up to meet them. Her mind, the landscape her subconscious conjured up as she slept, is rich and full and wonderfully imaginative. I could see colors I don’t think exist in the real world, feel textures that are completely impossible to describe.
It was beautiful. So why’d she sound so sad when she spoke about it?
“It isn’t real,” she continued, answering my unvoiced question. “Just like the future, this place isn’t real. The only importance it carries is what we give it.”
I understood. But why wouldn’t I want to live there, in that faraway place?
I asked her this, out loud this time.
“The dreamworld is Emerald City,” I explained, all the conversations I’d had with Damien echoing in my head. “And life is the yellow brick road and I don’t want to keep walking along that road, getting pelted with apples by cruel trees and running into dangerous witches when I could just be there.”
“But remember what happened when they got to the Emerald City?” she asked.
“They got a dope makeover.”
My mom laughed, the sound turning into pure music in the air, the melody winding its way into the roots of the great trees.
“Well, yes, that’s true.” She chuckled. “But they also found out the wizard was a fraud. It’s all just a mirage in the distance that evaporates into smoke when you reach it, only to re-form even further down the line. The only thing that’s real is the road beneath you.”
She touched my cheek, like that simple gesture would keep me grounded, keep my feet firmly rooted on the path instead of racing toward a horizon I could never reach. I put my hand up to cover hers and then we, and the world around us, evaporated into smoke itself, just like that far-off, glittering city.
She didn’t remember saying any of that to me, I don’t think. When I asked her how she slept, my mom just kissed me on the cheek and said that she’d had the most wonderful dream.
“I don’t remember a single thing,” she said, “but I know it was peaceful.” But she gave me a look like she knew that I had been part of that peace somehow. That we shared it. And that was enough.
July 2nd, 2017
Dear Mark,
It’s been exactly a year since we met. Since I stood by your bed, waiting for you to wake up, waiting for my life to start, even though I didn’t realize that at the time. I barely knew why I had agreed to help your sister—for some vague promise that she would find someone like me, a vague promise of a distant future where I’d be understood.
I lied to you before. In one of the letters you’ll never read, I lied. I guess that means I was lying to myself, if I’m the only one reading them. I think I’ve been lying to myself for a really, really long time. About … well, about a lot of things.
But I lied to you. I said I didn’t have anything to say when Sam accused me of being in love with you.
I didn’t say anything to her. That much is true. But I did have something to say.
I was.
I am. Still.
In love with you, I mean.
I think that’s what this feeling is. I barely know anything anymore—I don’t know what feelings are real, what wants are worth giving space to, what parts of myself I should hate. Is it all of me? I think maybe I’m supposed to hate all of me.
But I don’t hate you. That’s the one thing I do know. What I feel for you, whatever it is, it’s a physical ache. Sometimes when I’m on the road at night, the white lines flashing by in the glow of my headlights, hypnotizing me, I feel you in the seat next to me. If I keep looking straight ahead, if I ignore the empty shotgun seat in my periphery, I can imagine you fiddling with the radio dial, trying to find a good station as we go from nowhere to nowhere.
I would drive through a thousand nowheres, would never take my foot off the gas, if it meant keeping you next to me. I would tell you everything about me, answer all those questions you had that I was too scared to answer, reveal every mortifying detail of the childhood you were so curious about just to make you laugh, remove every stitch that’s sewn me up so you could look at the insides of all my scars and warm me with your pity.
Loving you feels like drowning. God, how I love you.
And I think it’s okay that you’ll never know. I think I finally understand now, what it means to love someone, all the different ways you can love them. It isn’t about me. It’s about you. And you’ve made it very clear to me that I’m not what you want. And that’s okay. It has to be okay. Loving you on my own has to be enough.
I want only wonderful things for you, Mark. And I’m sorry that couldn’t be me.
I wish that could have been me.
JULY 3RD, 2017
I woke up with the sun this morning for no reason that I could explain.
I tiptoed down the stairs, careful not to wake anyone, the house still filled with a beautiful, heavy hush. I started to make myself a cup of tea, planning on standing at the window with my hands wrapped around the warm mug, and just enjoying the silence, when my phone buzzed.
It was a text from an unknown number, one I’d never received a text from before, but I knew immediately who it was.
Play him music that he loves, the text read. It’ll help him remember.
My heart clenched when I read it, both at the idea that Damien had bothered to transfer my phone number to a new phone and was thinking about me enough to text me, and at what the text was telling me. Suddenly, I wanted so badly to sleep, to dreamdive into my dad’s head, bring him music.
So I did.
There was fog at first. Deep and gray and heavier than before. But I was stronger now, I knew what to do, so I puffed up my chest and blew it all away. And then it was the canyon again, soaked in color and impossibly huge. My dad sat on the edge, looking out over the expanse, watching the clouds go by. I walked over to him, a Jim Croce song coming up from the ground with every footstep. Like with my mom, my dad seemed to know instantly that I was there. He looked up, smiling at me and humming along to the song.
“Rose!” he said, his smile enormous, as I crouched down to join him at the edge. “What are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to say hello,” I said, smiling back.
“I was wondering when I was going to get a visit from you,” he said jovially.
“What do you mean?”
“Your mom said she thinks she got a visit from you the other night,” he explained. “I’ve never seen her look so at peace after waking up.”
“See?” I said lightly. “Dreamdiving can be a beautiful thing.”
“I never doubted that,” he said. It was an old argument at this point, but the way we were having it here didn’t feel dangerous or heated. We were just talking, with no consequence, enjoying the feeling of being here.
“Are you saying goodbye?” he asked eventually, after the color of the canyon had turned from pink to orange.
“What?” A momentary spike of panic brought a shadow over the world, and it was like my dad’s subconscious self knew a panicked Rose meant panicked dreams because he instantly put his hand over mine and starting hushing me soothingly, like I was a little kid.
“No, no, not like that,” he said softly. “I just meant … it seems like maybe you’re not going to be diving into our heads quite as much.”
“Oh.” I breathed, relief filling me up. “Yeah, I guess so.”
I hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t thought about my visit into my mom’s dream the other night as some kin
d of goodbye tour, but he was right, I didn’t want to be in their dreams anymore. I wanted to give them space. I told him as much.
“But I’m still going to dreamdive,” I went on. “I’ll just … create my own worlds. It’s not quite as fun, but…”
“No, I understand.” He nodded. “And I also understand why you want to spend so much time here. It’s extraordinary.”
We sat there, taking in the unimaginable world that we, somehow, had imagined. The canyon was deep without limits, light and shadow playing over it in mesmerizing shapes and movements, but it never gave me the feeling of being too deep. I was never worried I would fall into the abyss. Instead, looking out over it felt like understanding the beauty and simplicity of infinity.
“Maybe it’s like this,” he said.
“What?” I asked, my voice barely a sound on the breeze. But I knew he’d hear me all the same. This was our world, our rules.
The most perfect cloud floated above our heads.
“What comes after,” he said, serenely staring at the cloud as it gently skated by.
The word “after” hung between us like a physical thing. And then it was a physical thing. The light in the air came together to form the word, shimmering and so much less threatening in appearance than in concept.
“I think that’d be nice,” I said finally.
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