Short Story: "Dreams"

My Dear Reader,

It's been a while since I've posted fiction on here, so here's a little something for you.

"Dreams"

By Cecily Jane

And that is when I realize that they don't love me.

Maybe they never have. Maybe what they love is this life they've made, complete with a house, two cars, and a respectable amount of children. They love their American Dream, and I'm only a part of it. An appendage to it.

I am an expendable part of their life.

That's why they're doing this. No one who loved me would do this. No one who loved me would make me put these chemicals inside me. No one who loved me would let these pills play with my brain and diminish me. They look at me, and they see only the darkness. They do not see the loneliness that feeds it. They do not see the child behind it. They only see a dark spot on their perfect life, and they want to bleach it out of existence. Never mind that I will be corroded, along with my pain. Never mind that I will fade into nothing. In their eyes, it will be a pleasant nothing. An empty shell that will smile vaguely on command and look good in pictures. That's all they want. They have no use for me.

I am a torrent of raging emotions. I am lost in the storm. I am reaching out to for something to hold onto, but they don't reach back. They just glare at me in disapproval.

And so they send me away to the cold professionals who will scoop out my insides.

This can't be love.

Love is what I hold onto, even if I've never seen it. Even if it's only a hope in my heart. If they love me then I have nothing left.

They can't love me.

They can't.

**************

We just don't know our baby anymore.

Neither of us know when it all started to change. There used to be laughter in our house. We took it for granted back then.

If only we could go back to how it used to be.

We are doing the best that we can. It's not enough to simply say that we are struggling. Each member of our family has problems, and with each passing day, those problems get harder to solve. This is not a band aid over a skinned knee. This is our last chance to bring our child back before we reach the point of no return. That's why we rely on those who know how to fix these problems. We put our baby in their hands in the hopes that we will have a future. It's a little scary when the bills come, and sometimes we're not sure where the money is going to come from. But they tell us that it's helping. They tell us that if we just pull through, there is a chance. So we do.

We are overwhelmed and exhausted. But it's not hard to see where this behavior will lead. We've read the articles. We go to seminars during lunch hour, holding hands as we are confronted yet again with symptoms and statistics. The future we have been shown is frightening.

We have to trust the people who understand what is happening to our child.

This is a problem we have to solve.

We do all of this so that one day, we can hear that laughter again. That's the hope we hold onto, even if it seems we may never hear it again. Our baby is everything.

We can't lose our baby.

We can't.

Regards, best wishes, and understanding,

-Cecily Jane