Bats in the Belfry
May. 4th, 2011 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talonkarrdeThey are beautiful, fragile, impossible worlds.
And each is an escape, a diversion, an impression of meaning onto a world that gives none, a world that shifts crazily from minute to minute, teetering on the brink of incredulity, of hopelessness, of manic creation.
He constructs them in his mind as he falls asleep, thinks of a scene, a thought, a moment, and carries it with him into his dreams. He doesn’t know if other people can do this; he’s never told anyone about it and never will. It’s his superpower, he chooses to believe; it’s super enough that it saves him, at least.
And when he falls into the realm of dreams he takes that scrap of meaning — the feel of his mother patting him on the head and telling him everything will be better, the sound of his classmates slurs' — four-eyes, slant-eyes, flat-face — ringing in his ears, the abject loneliness of not wanting to go out to recess to be mocked more, where the teachers can’t see... he takes that and he creates worlds from them.
Worlds where those words, those feelings, that hurt is personified and anthropomorphized and made into something that he can slay as a knight, something he can shoot with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker by his side, something he can escape from by asking a boon of Lord Morpheus. He creates worlds in his dreams where all of the hurt that he suffers during the day becomes a monster, a quest that he undertakes in many ways and under many guises, one where he always escapes in the end.
They are long quests, and the battle is hard — but the nighttime is his respite, his chance to lick his wounds before going to battle the next day.
As he gets older, the words change and become more subtle. Sometimes they are not even words at all, simply glances, or eye-rolls, or disgusted sighs, and he takes those, too, and uses them as the foundations to create worlds that he dreams about, worlds where he does more than stare awkwardly to the side, not knowing how to respond in the proper manner, if there is one. He writes about those worlds sometimes.
These worlds are darker — there is less black and white, fewer princesses that are damsels in distress and more friends that are actually enemies in disguise; he has learned. But they are no less colorful, no less filled with fantasy and adventure, and meaning and symbolism and most of all success, or love, or whatever is missing from his life. He doesn’t win all the time now, he doesn’t get every girl or kill every dragon or beat the buggers every time, but his dreams remain his escape, his harbor, his shelter from his all-to-real enemies.
It’s not until later still, when he’s an ‘adult’, according to society, that he has the first intersection — the first flash, when his dreams take over for a while, because that’s the only defense mechanism he knows how to use, the one that’s served him the best. It’s a cliche, of course — he tells a pretty, popular girl what he really thinks, and gets nothing but scorn in return. Scorn, and a trip to the hospital, where he’s careful to say only that he tripped.
But clichés are what they are because they happen, often. Too often.
The next day at school, he feels his glasses ripped away from his face, and then it all blurs. As it should, but instead of seeing blurry schoolmates and classmates and every single one of them laughing at him, he sees ghosts and demons and he is clad in armor, a knight who must stand against the darkness.
And he does.
He does not cry, he does not sniffle, he holds his head high and demands of them, demands with his sword held out to them for his belongings to be returned. And those demons, they hiss and they snarl but they back away, they do, and he sees one come forward with the jewel of sight in its claws, and he takes what is rightfully his. And the fantasy disappears.
The next thirty minutes are spent in the campus health center psychiatrist’s office. It comes with all the usual tests, the drawing, the questions about whether he’s wanted to kill himself, whether he has friends, and he answers them all truthfully. No, he hasn't, yes, he has a few friends, et cetera, et cetera, until he's dismissed, with nothing to show for his experiences except a missed class.
But then it happens again, the next week, when an unfriendly classmate trips him, and he turns with the pen in his hand now a sleek, silvery weapon, and he threatens to take the man apart into his dissociate atoms. The voice is the voice of a hero, and the villain slinks away, unable to confront the light. It works, it is successful, and as reality returns, he wonders at the gift that he has been given.
Until it starts to happen every time he is threatened, his dreams come to life and replace reality, to defend his mind from the unfairness, the cruelty of real life, to substitute a world where right is right and wrong always loses.
But it's not the real world, and there are consequences that he can not control in this world. And every time he has an episode, he loses a bit of that control, as the monsters don't always follow the plot, as his weapons and speeches do not always work. And what he loses are his defenses, bit by bit, until they are eroded away and all his dreams no longer come — for what use are they, when they do not defend him — and his world is only a small room in a small institution where there are no sharp edges.
He wants to tell him that he is not like the others, that he was only there because his mind did what it needed to survive, that he is perfectly sane -- but his words fall on deaf ears. In the end, he loses even his worlds, as his dreams turn blank and bleak with the drugs that he is given.
And each is an escape, a diversion, an impression of meaning onto a world that gives none, a world that shifts crazily from minute to minute, teetering on the brink of incredulity, of hopelessness, of manic creation.
He constructs them in his mind as he falls asleep, thinks of a scene, a thought, a moment, and carries it with him into his dreams. He doesn’t know if other people can do this; he’s never told anyone about it and never will. It’s his superpower, he chooses to believe; it’s super enough that it saves him, at least.
And when he falls into the realm of dreams he takes that scrap of meaning — the feel of his mother patting him on the head and telling him everything will be better, the sound of his classmates slurs' — four-eyes, slant-eyes, flat-face — ringing in his ears, the abject loneliness of not wanting to go out to recess to be mocked more, where the teachers can’t see... he takes that and he creates worlds from them.
Worlds where those words, those feelings, that hurt is personified and anthropomorphized and made into something that he can slay as a knight, something he can shoot with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker by his side, something he can escape from by asking a boon of Lord Morpheus. He creates worlds in his dreams where all of the hurt that he suffers during the day becomes a monster, a quest that he undertakes in many ways and under many guises, one where he always escapes in the end.
They are long quests, and the battle is hard — but the nighttime is his respite, his chance to lick his wounds before going to battle the next day.
As he gets older, the words change and become more subtle. Sometimes they are not even words at all, simply glances, or eye-rolls, or disgusted sighs, and he takes those, too, and uses them as the foundations to create worlds that he dreams about, worlds where he does more than stare awkwardly to the side, not knowing how to respond in the proper manner, if there is one. He writes about those worlds sometimes.
These worlds are darker — there is less black and white, fewer princesses that are damsels in distress and more friends that are actually enemies in disguise; he has learned. But they are no less colorful, no less filled with fantasy and adventure, and meaning and symbolism and most of all success, or love, or whatever is missing from his life. He doesn’t win all the time now, he doesn’t get every girl or kill every dragon or beat the buggers every time, but his dreams remain his escape, his harbor, his shelter from his all-to-real enemies.
It’s not until later still, when he’s an ‘adult’, according to society, that he has the first intersection — the first flash, when his dreams take over for a while, because that’s the only defense mechanism he knows how to use, the one that’s served him the best. It’s a cliche, of course — he tells a pretty, popular girl what he really thinks, and gets nothing but scorn in return. Scorn, and a trip to the hospital, where he’s careful to say only that he tripped.
But clichés are what they are because they happen, often. Too often.
The next day at school, he feels his glasses ripped away from his face, and then it all blurs. As it should, but instead of seeing blurry schoolmates and classmates and every single one of them laughing at him, he sees ghosts and demons and he is clad in armor, a knight who must stand against the darkness.
And he does.
He does not cry, he does not sniffle, he holds his head high and demands of them, demands with his sword held out to them for his belongings to be returned. And those demons, they hiss and they snarl but they back away, they do, and he sees one come forward with the jewel of sight in its claws, and he takes what is rightfully his. And the fantasy disappears.
The next thirty minutes are spent in the campus health center psychiatrist’s office. It comes with all the usual tests, the drawing, the questions about whether he’s wanted to kill himself, whether he has friends, and he answers them all truthfully. No, he hasn't, yes, he has a few friends, et cetera, et cetera, until he's dismissed, with nothing to show for his experiences except a missed class.
But then it happens again, the next week, when an unfriendly classmate trips him, and he turns with the pen in his hand now a sleek, silvery weapon, and he threatens to take the man apart into his dissociate atoms. The voice is the voice of a hero, and the villain slinks away, unable to confront the light. It works, it is successful, and as reality returns, he wonders at the gift that he has been given.
Until it starts to happen every time he is threatened, his dreams come to life and replace reality, to defend his mind from the unfairness, the cruelty of real life, to substitute a world where right is right and wrong always loses.
But it's not the real world, and there are consequences that he can not control in this world. And every time he has an episode, he loses a bit of that control, as the monsters don't always follow the plot, as his weapons and speeches do not always work. And what he loses are his defenses, bit by bit, until they are eroded away and all his dreams no longer come — for what use are they, when they do not defend him — and his world is only a small room in a small institution where there are no sharp edges.
He wants to tell him that he is not like the others, that he was only there because his mind did what it needed to survive, that he is perfectly sane -- but his words fall on deaf ears. In the end, he loses even his worlds, as his dreams turn blank and bleak with the drugs that he is given.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-05-05 10:26 pm (UTC)This is so bleak and sad. Truly heartbreaking that everything is taken from him in the end when he has done nothing wrong. Powerful and heart wrenching.
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Date: 2011-05-08 01:50 am (UTC)thank you, of course, for the rec.
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Date: 2011-05-05 08:07 pm (UTC)Not the specifics, mind. But, yeah. Takes me back like wow.
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Date: 2011-05-08 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-08 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 01:50 pm (UTC)But I wanted to thank you for the thought, and the support throughout the season, and... we'll see if I come back :P
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Date: 2011-05-05 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-05-08 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-06 12:07 pm (UTC)My first thought was that this is what would it be like if Don Quixote was born into modern American society. Then upon further reflection, I have to admit that if I had not found a (real flesh-and-blood) best friend in fourth grade, this could have been my story.
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Date: 2011-05-08 01:59 am (UTC)And yes, I think it is often friends that pull us through and save us.
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Date: 2011-05-06 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-08 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-06 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-05-08 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-08 10:40 pm (UTC)Still, she felt like part of her brain had been shut off and resented it, even though she knew she sort of didn't have a choice.