Nightmare
I had a dream last night that I was in class, explaining to my communications teacher why I didn't use pictures from the database (like we were supposed to) in my presentation on Agoraphobia. The only pictures from the database that I could find were stock photos of pretty, made up, hair-did white women badly imitating "The Scream" or with make-uppy tear tracks running down their faces as they jutted out their lower lip, or-- in their only indication that they were trying to have anything to do with agoraphobia -- staring out a window forlornly with tear tracks on their faces, as if the reason they were crying was because they wanted to be out there too. I not only find this photos gimmicky and awful, but they misrepresent the disorder and make it into a joke. I refuse to let them be presented, by me, as representative of agoraphobia because I feel like hat would make me a liar. I know better. This is not what agoraphobia and panic and depression look like. First of all, if you're agoraphobic, I said, you're probably not going to be crying right in front of your window because a large part of it is not wanting to let the outside world into your sadness and anxiety. Crying in front of a window is letting it in. The same article with one of these pictures even talks about how people with agoraphobia will avoid windows and keep the blinds drawn all the time. Yeah. Way to go.
That's when a huge window appears in the back of the classroom. It's getting dark outside but from the view, you just see a couple of stone/brick buildings. I say, I love this view because it reminds me of Boston and I feel safe.
Then the view flickers out, everything is a dark, indigo blue outside and gray inside, and everyone else is gone. I'm on the ground and I realize the building is falling before it actually does, in slow motion, start to tip on its side. I roll into a ball and cover my head and neck with my arms, and the windows blow in, and the room tips and then settles. I am still roughly where I was, with no one in the room but a pile of desks at the far end and a lot of broken glass. My phone starts ringing and I dizzily reach for it. I think my mother must be calling. I imagine her in her old office at work, having a coworker come in to tell her a bomb went off in Dallas, or maybe there was some kind of natural disaster. I grab my phone and see my sister's name but it stops ringing before I can answer it. I'm dizzy, and there are some scratches on my arms from the glass but they're superficial and I think: I have to look for survivors. So I start going through the pile of desks even though everyone was gone before the building fell and I don't see anyone in there. When I find nothing, I move quickly out of the room and down a short hallway into another.
My sister is lying there, in a bed, the wrong way around. The window above her is broken and I see a few shards of glass embedded in her nose. I try to scream for her, but my voice is so hoarse it comes out as a broken whisper. I run towards her, still trying to speak, and not understanding why she's there. Then I notice her face is there, the only blood is on the cuts in her nose, but I can see through her neck and the side of her head. Her skull is broken and her brain is sitting, fully intact, on the bed beside her, looking somehow like it crawled out through the gaping hole in her neck. I scream her name over and over, still just a cracking, useless release of air, and her face turns to me and smiles this creepy, empty little smile.
And then I wake up.
That's when a huge window appears in the back of the classroom. It's getting dark outside but from the view, you just see a couple of stone/brick buildings. I say, I love this view because it reminds me of Boston and I feel safe.
Then the view flickers out, everything is a dark, indigo blue outside and gray inside, and everyone else is gone. I'm on the ground and I realize the building is falling before it actually does, in slow motion, start to tip on its side. I roll into a ball and cover my head and neck with my arms, and the windows blow in, and the room tips and then settles. I am still roughly where I was, with no one in the room but a pile of desks at the far end and a lot of broken glass. My phone starts ringing and I dizzily reach for it. I think my mother must be calling. I imagine her in her old office at work, having a coworker come in to tell her a bomb went off in Dallas, or maybe there was some kind of natural disaster. I grab my phone and see my sister's name but it stops ringing before I can answer it. I'm dizzy, and there are some scratches on my arms from the glass but they're superficial and I think: I have to look for survivors. So I start going through the pile of desks even though everyone was gone before the building fell and I don't see anyone in there. When I find nothing, I move quickly out of the room and down a short hallway into another.
My sister is lying there, in a bed, the wrong way around. The window above her is broken and I see a few shards of glass embedded in her nose. I try to scream for her, but my voice is so hoarse it comes out as a broken whisper. I run towards her, still trying to speak, and not understanding why she's there. Then I notice her face is there, the only blood is on the cuts in her nose, but I can see through her neck and the side of her head. Her skull is broken and her brain is sitting, fully intact, on the bed beside her, looking somehow like it crawled out through the gaping hole in her neck. I scream her name over and over, still just a cracking, useless release of air, and her face turns to me and smiles this creepy, empty little smile.
And then I wake up.