The First Little Babies...
I keep having these similar dreams... in them, I think I am a mother.
The situations I am in aren't always clear. What is going on and the surroundings are always vague and confusing, a true landscape of a dream. But in all the uncertainty and misty shroud of subconscious one thing is clear... the faces of children.
Sometimes these images haunt me. At times when I am unhappy with my own choices, and perhaps too scared to admit to myself that the path I've chosen isn't the best, someone will admonish me.
A daughter like Winter.
Her dark features and smooth demeanor often remain wordless...but her eyes glisten and brow furrows as if hurt by the pain I am forcing myself to endure. Her lucid, perceptive eyes need not speak to convey concern...and my heart wrenches in anxiety that her features may reflect a more daunting emotion... disappointment.
I want more than anything to make her smile, to embrace the child and prove that I will change myself, to take hold of all the fear and apprehension in both of us and create a feeling of warmth throughout the soul... to love her.
Another face appeared to me at once.
A son like Spring.
There was a time when my worst nightmare appeared to me through this bright young face. Following a clear recognition of the son I dreamt to conceive, I witnessed a sequence of events which lead to a revival of the demons from my childhood...but they were unleashed upon my own children, and I was powerless.
During this sequence I watched helplessly with a third person view as I unknowingly placed my children in the care of malicious figures from my past, thinking one person I trusted would undoubtedly keep them away from another who once tormented me. But just like her enabling of my childhood horrors, she allowed that man to prey upon my precious children...
It was only when my bright, passionate son began to change that I awoke to the reality of the atrocities my children were being put through unbeknownst to me. His smile developed that exasperation that I had worked so hard to conceal and overcome in myself. His laughter faded, like the sudden absence of the beautiful music from some wonderful theatrical scene. This dramatic change brought to light the silent pain of my daughter. And my concern quickly developed into desperation to uncover the truth... a truth that broke my heart.
...so many realizations brought forth from the most fearsome scenario I could bear to imagine. How would I protect these children? How would I allow them to grow with as little hardship and emotional burdens as I could afford? With one notion with as much certainty as a sense of being, how dearly I would love them, and how much more painful it would be to see them suffer than it ever was to endure my own tribulations.
There were more faces. Maybe they are twins...men, women, lovers... all vague but somehow haunting in the clarity of my subconscious. And sometimes in my waking moments I catch a passing impression of familiarity in a face or a being that feels otherworldly and somehow connected to me... but often such people are not as I imagined, polluted by fears and marred with scars of their own lives... and I can't but wonder, "is this perhaps destined?"
Even in my youth I can feel to my core a pull toward creation of fantasy and fulfillment of destiny, and I dream that one day I will remember every face from the confines of my inner world. I will remember everything I've lost, and become strong enough to be something I still feel creeping uncertainty of my own qualifications and abilities for... myself.... a woman... a mother.
The situations I am in aren't always clear. What is going on and the surroundings are always vague and confusing, a true landscape of a dream. But in all the uncertainty and misty shroud of subconscious one thing is clear... the faces of children.
Sometimes these images haunt me. At times when I am unhappy with my own choices, and perhaps too scared to admit to myself that the path I've chosen isn't the best, someone will admonish me.
A daughter like Winter.
Her dark features and smooth demeanor often remain wordless...but her eyes glisten and brow furrows as if hurt by the pain I am forcing myself to endure. Her lucid, perceptive eyes need not speak to convey concern...and my heart wrenches in anxiety that her features may reflect a more daunting emotion... disappointment.
I want more than anything to make her smile, to embrace the child and prove that I will change myself, to take hold of all the fear and apprehension in both of us and create a feeling of warmth throughout the soul... to love her.
Another face appeared to me at once.
A son like Spring.
There was a time when my worst nightmare appeared to me through this bright young face. Following a clear recognition of the son I dreamt to conceive, I witnessed a sequence of events which lead to a revival of the demons from my childhood...but they were unleashed upon my own children, and I was powerless.
During this sequence I watched helplessly with a third person view as I unknowingly placed my children in the care of malicious figures from my past, thinking one person I trusted would undoubtedly keep them away from another who once tormented me. But just like her enabling of my childhood horrors, she allowed that man to prey upon my precious children...
It was only when my bright, passionate son began to change that I awoke to the reality of the atrocities my children were being put through unbeknownst to me. His smile developed that exasperation that I had worked so hard to conceal and overcome in myself. His laughter faded, like the sudden absence of the beautiful music from some wonderful theatrical scene. This dramatic change brought to light the silent pain of my daughter. And my concern quickly developed into desperation to uncover the truth... a truth that broke my heart.
...so many realizations brought forth from the most fearsome scenario I could bear to imagine. How would I protect these children? How would I allow them to grow with as little hardship and emotional burdens as I could afford? With one notion with as much certainty as a sense of being, how dearly I would love them, and how much more painful it would be to see them suffer than it ever was to endure my own tribulations.
There were more faces. Maybe they are twins...men, women, lovers... all vague but somehow haunting in the clarity of my subconscious. And sometimes in my waking moments I catch a passing impression of familiarity in a face or a being that feels otherworldly and somehow connected to me... but often such people are not as I imagined, polluted by fears and marred with scars of their own lives... and I can't but wonder, "is this perhaps destined?"
Even in my youth I can feel to my core a pull toward creation of fantasy and fulfillment of destiny, and I dream that one day I will remember every face from the confines of my inner world. I will remember everything I've lost, and become strong enough to be something I still feel creeping uncertainty of my own qualifications and abilities for... myself.... a woman... a mother.
Comments
Post a Comment