Dreams of 18(108)

“But then, Brian happened. I was terrified about that too, about taking care of a baby. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know if I could do it. But I did. In fact, I threw myself into it, into taking care of my kid. I became everything he wanted me to be. Everything he needed and I did it happily like every other parent, I imagine. It was all about him, his homework, his practice, his friends, his school, his needs, his wants. Everything was about him. I became his father and nothing else. Until you. Until I saw you and something happened to me.”

My heart skips a beat when he says that.

Something happened to him…

You do something to me…

He said that too, and even then, my heart squeezed for him. Squeezed for that look of confusion I saw on his face.

He’s not confused now, just vulnerable and I breathe out, “What happened?”

He brings his hand to his chest, right where his heart is. I imagine him feeling his own heartbeats under his fingers.

I loved doing that. I loved feeling the beats of his heart whenever I slept with my head on his chest. It was soothing to me.

I hope it’s soothing to him too.

He needs that, in this moment.

And since I’m standing all the way over here, I want his heart to give him peace until the time comes for me to close the distance and do it myself.

“When I saw you, Violet, it felt like someone stabbed me in the chest,” he rasps.

My eyes go wide. “What?”

He chuckles; it’s brittle and thin. “Or at least, it felt like it. I saw you up on the roof, with your thick, gorgeous hair and your arms open wide, something got lodged inside my chest, just under my heart and for the longest time, it felt like a knife of some sort. Something that made me… different. It wasn’t that, though.”

“W-what was it?”

“My soul,” he whispers. “It was my soul waking up. The thing that keeps a man alive, came alive in me when I saw you. You woke up my soul, Violet.”

“I did?”

He nods. “Yeah. I’d watch you after that. I couldn’t help myself and I was angry about that, you know. I was angry about watching a girl half my age. I was angry that something was happening to me. I planted a fucking rose garden – something I hadn’t done in years – just to watch that girl. Just to have an excuse to look at her at night. God, I thought I was losing my mind.

“Suddenly, I started to feel things. I started to want things for myself. I started to crave and I was so used to not doing any of those things, I was so used to not wanting anything for myself that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know how to handle you. So I kept away from you. I kept away from you for so many reasons until I didn’t. Until the night of your eighteenth birthday.

“And then, everything happened and months later, you found me at my lowest. Jesus Christ, I wanted you to go away. You were so young. My son liked you. You made me feel things.”

He scrubs a hand over his face again. “And I wanted you to leave me alone so badly. So fucking badly but you never listened. You never left. You never went anywhere. Not only that, you saved me. You went and goddamn saved me and finally, I realized something.”

At this, he gives me a look that I’ve never seen from him. He gives me a look of pure and utter vulnerability. A look that tells me that he’s undone.

And it becomes so hard to stand here.

So I give in and take a step toward him. “What did you realize?”

“You told me that your sunglasses and your cap are crutches, yeah? You use them to hide from the world. I use crutches too, Violet.”

My heart is slamming in my chest now. Slamming and slamming. This was so not what I expected him to say. Not at all.

“You do?”

“Yeah. I hide behind taking care of my son and a boring, dead-end job because it’s easier. It’s easier to provide for him because I should be doing that anyway, and to work a job that I hate than to face the truth.”

“What’s the truth?”

“The truth is that I’ve never really lived. I’ve gone through the motions. I’ve survived, yes. But I’ve never really been alive. I’ve never really had a dream of my own. I never had the luxury to dream a dream. Maybe if my life was different and I lived in a world that was less lonely and selfish, I would’ve learned. I would’ve learned to live, to dream, to want. But I never lived in that world, Violet and I don’t know how to do any of those things. I don’t know if I can. So I used crutches. I hid behind things just because it was easier than to face reality. To face the fact that I’m halfway done with my life and I know nothing about dreams and wants and wishes. But I’m going to try.”

So far, his expression has been lost. Both like a little boy who forgot the dream he had last night and an old man at the end of his life who never got to fulfill any of the dreams he saw.

Because he was living for everyone else and neglected to live for himself.

But his expression has changed now. Somewhere at the end of it, it became fierce and determined.

His nostrils flare and he fists his hands at his sides, as if strength has finally returned in his body.

“I’m going to try. I’m going to learn, Violet.”

“Learn what?”

“Poetry.”