I once had a dream
Everyone I know is downtown. Herded like a massive group of cattle and I’m in the very front. We keep moving forward through the alleys in the flood waters, red bricks that have come loose float alongside us. We come to a part I have never seen before. It was designed much like the room full of doors that Alice gets suck in until she finds the correct door. There are four different ways to choose from. First is to try to turn around and go back, an impossible feat, Second to turn right and go with my mother, third to go straight and by myself and finally fourth to go left and wait for Avery and her father. The current starts moving faster the closer I get to my choices and my face hits the bricks of a giant bank. I am stuck in between the third and fourth choice. I can hear my mother yelling for me and her co-workers commenting on my choices. They are at the front of the horde now trying to get me to come with them. But not even ten feet back I see josh carrying Avery. My heart melts and I feel as if im standing free of the waves of confusion. I get smashed into the walls of the bank again. The water is slowly draining as I walk up to my mother’s side to apologize for upsetting her.
Like the flow of water from my dream when I woke up my tears wouldn’t stop. My mind made it clear. I was never going to change my life. I can never go back. I would never give up Avery, nor have I ever even thought about it. I choose to not be safe so she is my responsibility and I do not want that to change. Going off on my own would be amazing but no one thinks I’m ready to do that. And that brick wall of the bank keeps popping up, screaming money, money, money! It will not shut up. It screams even louder when I think about the fourth choice, the choice that makes me the happiest. Sometimes when I think about this I like to cover my ears and sing as loud as possible so I can block out the yells of the wall to imagine how my life would be. What it would be like to be a wife and mother, to live the stereotype of homemaker and lover the way many women before me have. In the end though like a mirror of my dream my life becomes what my mother wants of it. I follow her rules, break some, come and apologize. Start over. I do what she says, I forget, I apologize. No matter what she doesn’t trust me. She doesn’t trust me with my life or Avery’s. all I want is the freedom of my peers, all I want is for someone to believe in me and my dreams and to be happy with the choices I make. Someone that never says I told you so when I fall but helps me pick myself up and helps me find the beginning of a new path to happiness.