It’s different when you’re standing on the other side of the looking glass.
I glide into an endless tunnel of light, feeling anything and everything. I wake up to noise and beeping, but I don’t remember. I later learn this is when my mother dies because I come into the world, and the point in time where I feel happiest is also the moment where my whole life comes tumbling down like an avalanche of winter snow down a clean mountain.
I look down and I’m running as fast I possibly can down an anonyms city street, my legs propelling forward. I’m running so fast I can’t even believe it. But I look behind me and something taking the general form of a dog, basically a monster is chasing me, but I can’t see exactly what it is because this street is nearly pitch black. I speed up until my feet aren’t even touching the ground anymore, I just float into the sky, into space, and away until my mother who I’ve seen so many times in photographs and videos is holding my hand, and my father no longer has tears flowing down his face every lonely Christmas. I wake up to him pulling the sheets off of my bed, an 8 year old me sprawled across the bed like a splatter on the canvas.
A million people cheer my name until the sound is burned into my brain, and I run through the crowd, picking a good looking guy out. We’re suddenly thumped down onto a dry field that feels like feathers and looking up to a sky filled with endless stars and nothing hurts until I look over the field and see a distant figure approaching, too blurry to see who it is. I wake up drenched in sweat, my long locks stuck to my forehead, lying on some friend’s couch and knowing I have to drive to all the way to the college campus. My real life feels as distant as New York to China.
I stroll to the edge of the shoreline, the sea softly touching my feet, urging them gently to come in the water and play. But, I don’t, and instead I walk down the beach for a long time, gazing lazily at the water and the horizon. I reach something that wasn’t there last time though, a secluded cave, hidden under the cover of avid rainforest. My bare feet carry me into the now rocky terrain and away from the fiery orange sunset forming behind me, my husband and son laughing in the water. The cave is cold and dark and I suddenly reach a curious sight. An enormous cut of pure diamond sits in the middle of a circular opening, light pouring in from above. I run over to the diamond, crawl on top of it and cry, full of guilt, until there’s nothing left of me. I wake up with puffy red eyes, the distant sound of bacon sizzling in the frying pan, clutching a diamond necklace which belonged to my mother, feeling like this for the first time in a long time. I throw the necklace across the room, still frustrated with myself after all of this time, and it’s hits the wooden floor, making a sound like a mallet to a base drum during the annual summer carnival.
A trumpet plays jazz softly in the background and I’m in a huge elevator with everyone I love. This elevator is shooting upwards with no destination what so ever. We glide through Earth, and then past the moon, past the planets. And suddenly it’s only my mother and me. I whisper, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” until I can’t hear anything and scenes of my life project onto the glass panes of the elevator, my lungs feeling tight. She utters the words I’ve been searching for since the day I was born:
“It’s okay”. Light fills the tiny space and I’m finally as alone and as free as a dove released on the wedding day. I'm so happy.
But this time I don't wake up. It's different being on the other side of the looking glass.