I had a bad dream last night...
I was walking through this street, or a parking lot or something. It was kind of dusky and the air smelled sort of greasy and plastic-y, like DisneyWorld. It was cold and I could see my breath.
A man came up in front of me, calling me by my name. He was black and very skinny, and I didn't know him, but... It was like somebody I knew VERY well -- like on X-files when Nice Mister Smith morphs into creepy Arnold Schwarzenegger-looking Alien Dude? -- was hiding in this guy's body, but I couldn't identify him...
He held a rock in his hand -- no, not a rock... it was a brick... He held a brick in his hand, raised it above his head, and smashed me in the face with it. He was speaking to me, yelling at me, saying, "I don't want to have to do this, Helena, but you HURT ME."
He hit me repeatedly. He beat me, and I felt my vision blur. I dropped to the pavement and ducked my head under my hands.
Then he was gone. Ran off toward... the grocery store? I think he ran off toward a grocery store. Whatever. It didn't matter. Next thing I knew, my mother was standing behind me and I was looking into a mirror. "Helena, what happened to you?" she yelled.
"Nothing," I said.
She grabbed me by the throat and forced me to look at the mirror. The entire right side of my face was purple and black. My right arm was purple and black. I has bloody gashes and bruises all up and down my right leg, and a huge purple and yellow bruise on the left side of my forehead.
"Nothing," I said. "I fell."
I don't know why I had to lie to her. I hurt all over, and I was ugly... Not just bruised, but MAIMED -- deformed. And yet, I lied.
I woke up crying for the first time in almost two months. Peter hugged me -- we'd fallen asleep after watching "Girl, Interrupted" at his place -- and mumbled something about being cold.
"Are you cold too?"
"Uh-huh." There were tears in my eyes. I barely knew what he was saying.
He wrapped another blanket around me, and I went back to sleep, feeling more horrible than I have in I don't know how long. Horrible... but safe.
I looked very, very hard at myself in the mirror this morning. I like my short hair. And my eyes. And the way I look in glasses. And my figure.
No bruises. No gashes. Nothing to hide...
But I feel like there's something to hide. I don't know what it is or why... But it's as though I did something to deserve that beating in my dream last night. I woke up and I just wanted to say I was sorry... I don't really know why... But I am. I'm sorry.
~Helena*