dreams turned into nightmares
Janet Kuypers
edited from 1994 prose 06/23/11
Based on the 1994 short story publisahed
in her 6" x 9" ISBN# book Close Cover Before Striking
Analyze this.
Get yourself on track.
All men are scum anyway,
Christ,
this was just your reaffirmation of it.
None of these people really matter.
Just get back to your work,
get yourself focused again.
That’s how to demonstrate your worth.
You don’t care about your work.
Who are you trying to impress?
Let it pile up. It doesn’t matter.
God, why does it always feel like this?
Why is it that you have to
depend on others for your worth,
and when there is one little crumb of affection
thrown at you,
you savor it and pray
that it’s a sign for more
and you hope
and your pray
and then when nothing comes
it’s all the same again
except this time
all of your hopes are shot.
Why are there times like this when you feel so alone?
There are other times when you relish in your solitude.
Look at the dishes pile up.
You should be doing laundry.
Slob.
Bitch.
Can’t even clean up after yourself.
Why does everything have to hurt you so much?
Why are you crying so much more now?
Why do you look for ways to feel bad, reasons to cry?
What do you feel guilty for?
Why do you go through this?
Oh, don’t even try to daydream
and get yourself out of this.
It will always be the same, you have to remember that.
You can try to dream that you deserve something better,
but don’t bother.
You will always keep trying,
with the hope that it will get better,
and you will keep failing,
every single god-damn time,
and that’s the way it will go,
forever and ever,
on and on.
It won’t stop, not until you do.
Can you resign yourself to this?
Can you resign yourself to not trying,
or are you going to keep building your hopes up
for nothing?
What is the good of anything that you’ve done?
Are you any happier for it?
God, how do you go through these cycles?
How the Hell can you deal with it?
There’s got to be a way to get out of it.
Try not to think of it.
You’re so lonely.
All you’ve got left to you is your mind,
and it’s destroying you, slowly.
When will it destroy you altogether?
When?
It’s only a matter of time.
Why do you dream? Are you trying to escape reality?
Are you trying to create a new reality?
I think you dream and dream
until you think that it’s all actually real,
and then when someone in your life
proves your dream wrong
your whole world falls to pieces.
Pieces.
Little pieces.
Look, there goes a few now.
Try to pick them up,
you’re going to lose them if you don’t pick them up
and try to piece them back together again,
and then you’ll be destroyed.
Can you create a new dream with what you have left?
You want to slip into it again.
It’s what keeps you alive, keeps you going.
It’s the only thing that gives you hope.
But what the Hell do you need that hope for?
You’ll be let down, you know it,
if you can step down from that dream of yours.
Just get out of it! Just stop.
All these good dreams keep reminding you
of what it could be like,
if only you were someone else,
if only you were someone liked
and successful and important.
And those bad dreams,
those are your way of punishing yourself for dreaming.
Your mind slips them in there,
when no one else is looking,
and then,
because you live in your dreams so much,
you have to play it out,
and then you’ll cry and cry
and there’s nothing you can do.
You can’t face up to it, can you?
You’ll be no better than this.
Your life will be no better than this.
Nothing will be better than this,
better than dreams turned into nightmares.
Copyright © 2011 Janet Kuypers.
All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.
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