Let Me Tell You What It's Like

My classes at school force me out of my comfort zone and make me write things that aren't poetry. I've been forced to write "creative non-fiction" (tf is that). 

I was taking a nap Sunday evening and I had a threateningly horrifying dream.

We were driving over the mountain coming home from the city. My hands were on the wheel and my closest friends held the seats next to and behind mine. There was music and everyone was breathing and I could almost feel a sense of their blood running side by side mine.

This mountain is high you see. And when you’re at the top, it sometimes feels like the first day of your life – discovering things you never knew before. Like what goes up must come down and even when your parents tell you, “Don’t touch that, it’s poison oak”, you still touch it to find out what poison oak even means. I look north, and the city’s skyline stands below me. The big-city dreams I thought I was afraid of look miniscule. On my other side is the valley in which I live. Where my childhood friends live. Where my family lives. Where I went to high school. Where I kissed my first kiss. Where my brother taught me to play poker in the basement when I was thirteen.

Usually dreams are blurry and things are created that in reality, aren’t. But I’m telling you, when I turned my head back around form looking at the bright lights, luminous from the north, I saw the place I call home – familiarity, big brother, and the smell of baked potatoes from the kitchen. The nostalgia I felt came from moments that are real. Not “dream” real. Real-life real. Rooted from being tucked in at night and sneaking marshmallows from the pantry after everyone was asleep.

This is where the dream became hazy. I don’t know exactly how I drove off the road, but I did. And we were falling from a very high mountain. We knew what was inevitable.

The haziness was gone and the matter was again absolute.

Everything went in slow motion. Funeral pace. It was like time didn’t want to move forward. Milliseconds were heavy and passed leisurely, apathetic. I had a Coke in the cup holder and the ice and dark, cherry-colored liquid floating in front of me, mid-air, looked like a piece of abstract art. I watched it for a time before turning around to look at the others.

Their faces wore horror. One was screaming. One was silent, closing her eyes. I locked gazes with the last. Her eyebrows raised into tall arches and her brown eyes not moving from mine. We looked at each other for a few moments before she broke the silence that slow motion tends to deafen. Her mouth opened to speak. A lethargic movement. It was just like the movies. Her eyes somehow got wider and she screamed, “We’re going to die!”. I know, it sounds ridiculous and comical and I guess it was but it was a dream and we all know how it goes. Dreams never sound the way they felt.

It was in that moment. For the first time in my life, I more than just thought, I knew I was going to die. It was reality. It was inevitable. We were falling and there wasn’t anything I could do.

I was going to die and I looked out over the lights and the lake and everything I’ve ever known for a surety and the thoughts of the city in the north were very quiet. Almost not at all.

I won’t say I know what it feels like to be actually dying. Because I don’t know what it feels like to be in the process of dying. To be slipping. To bleed-out slowly. To lie on a hospital bed with tubes running in and out of my skin. To witness moments passing by that I’m only partially aware of because half of me is listening to my mother’s last words and the other half of me speaking God. I don’t know what that’s like. But I think I know what it’s like to know I’m going to die. To entirely comprehend the idea that in mere moments, it was going to be the end even if it felt like the beginning. I can try to tell you what it was like.

It’s like soft kitten skin. It’s like standing where the sand meets the ocean. The water covers your toes and at first it’s cold. Your shoulders tense. But you become used to the temperature and as it rises to your ankles, you can look out over the waves and exhale like it’s nothing.

You know that time? When you wake up five minutes before your alarm sounds. Pale blue sunlight through the curtains. You forget why you’re you for a moment and why you ever questioned string theory. And peered through the curtains. The quiet way the cement matches the color of the sky. You alarm still sounds but this time, you were ready for it.

It’s like the hotel sheets are really cold and sliding into them feels like redemption. It’s like preparing your entire life for a tsunami and getting a soft rainfall. It’s like watching it’s precipitation to follow.

It’s like throwing a boulder into the pond and rather than being splashed by it’s wake, there’s only a single ripple to show for it.

Like running your hand through the soft sedative steam rising from the lavish boiling water below.

It’s like five minutes before your alarm sounds.

I thought about every good feeling I’ve ever felt. I thought about how beautiful my backyard looked in the fall and how alive the sky looks around 6 a.m in the summer. I thought about running and high-fives and poetry slams and the way my best friend’s watercolors could end WWIII if it ever broke out. I thought about my family. About the way I felt when dad came home and we group-hugged. Or as my sister tried to tell me about kissing. My little brother crawling into my bed at night. I wanted to drape my mother’s black hair around me like a blanket so I could feel her one last time.  I could smell her candles. Pine and lavender.

I only thought about pain for a small moment – right before we hit the ground. I thought about whether it would be quick or if I would lie with my eyes closed feeling broken bones and red liquid. How quick could the paramedics get here? We were so close. We were so close. My teeth clenched. I closed my eyes. I thought about the instant death I was most surely facing and who is to tell any of us what “instant” death is anyways. “Instant” rice takes ten minutes and “instant” pudding? An hour. 

I tried to suck it up. To take this death thing like a man. Shoulders tensed. Eyes clenched. Quick prayer of the repentant sinner. Here’s to the unknown.

We hit. Hard. The movie-dramatic slow motion had worn off and everything was happening fast. We rolled, and I could smell grass and Coke and it didn’t even hurt because it was just a dream. That’s what they do. Dreams. The visions, sounds, and people around you seem so real but the physical feelings can’t be conjured. The rolling stopped and all I could do was lie there while the ambulance sirens and screams of the scarred witnesses were getting louder.

When I woke up, I was in the state of I-think-I’m-still-in-a-crashed-car-but-this-pillow-is-really-soft. As the relief of a safe reality sank into my veins I almost wanted to be back in the car. In a grassy field. Just off the face of a cliff. Thinking about every good feeling I’ve ever felt.

I lie in my bed. The blankets are warm and my body is imprinted into the memory foam mattress and my alarm hasn’t sounded yet. There is pale-blue moonlight through the curtains. I forget why I am myself for a moment and why I ever questioned string theory. Peer through the curtains. The quiet way the black pavement matches the starless sky. My alarm sounds, and this time I am ready for it.

 -tara j

*applause to whoever read the whole thing*