Nirvana: Part II of Elysium

My dreams turned to nightmares have become more disturbing of late.
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A man holding a knife to my throat and cutting off my hair instead of killing me. 
I'm not sure why it was so traumatic for me to lose my hair in a dream but it was.

Hiding and they came in with guns. They were furious because they couldn't find me and I knew if they had they would have killed me. Even so, they fired into nothingness and I was certain I felt the bullets hit me. 

Opening the door to the barrel of a gun. Somehow I was only shot in the leg. 
I bled but I lived because someone stopped to help me. I think I knew him.
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Being chased through a maze with no entrance or no exit and I couldn't lose them.
No matter how fast I ran and how many places I found to hide, they still followed. 

I'm afraid to sleep. No monsters under my bed, but they live here in my head.

The worst ones are when I wake up with tears rolling down my face into my hair. 
But I can't remember what my dream was, I only remember that it was terrifying. 
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A few weeks ago I caved and started sleeping with my stuffed animals again.
I know it's childish and silly, but now I don't feel so alone when I wake up.

Once I woke in the middle of the night to the ringing of my phone. I knew who was calling before I picked the phone up and when I answered it and heard that voice on the other end I remembered that I'm only alone in my mind.

My dreams still scare me, though, because I can't do anything to stop them. 
Except not go to sleep and by now I've seen how well that doesn't work out. 
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It doesn't, so I'm stuck with these nightmares until I figure out how to fix myself.

Labyrinth

I've spent my entire life in this labyrinth but I've never gotten lost because it's inside me. Inside my mind. I'm only lost if I want to be and the deeper I go into the maze the more I can hide myself. And I'm the only one who can get in and out. 

At first there's just a long hallway, with doors on either side. These are the shallow things- whether or not my room is clean, which clothes look good together. I probably spend more time here than I should.

When you reach the end of the hallway you'll have two choices. To the right you should see a door with the word 'secrets' scrawled across the top. I'd rather not let you in there right now, so take a left up the staircase to everything that is constantly on my mind. It's a long staircase. At the top is a semicircle of doors. There are five of them that you could explore. The door to the far left is Guilt. The sweatshirt that was never returned, the little white lies I told, all the promises I didn't keep. Behind the next door is Failures. In there are all the shows I was never cast in, all the scholarships I never received, all the goals I never reached. This door is reopened every time I add a new item to the list, which is much too often. 

To the right there are better things. The far right door is Comfort, everything that makes me feel confident about myself, such as friends I've made and compliments I've received. Next to it is Accomplishments: the good grades I've gotten, how my room is always clean, how I manage my time.

The door in the middle is Love. Behind it are two hallways. One slopes upward, the other down. The first one leads to a large room, very simply designed but tastefully decorated. Pictures of my family, immediate and extended, sit on the tables, while those of my friends adorn the walls. This is where I keep a record of every person I've ever loved, however briefly or deeply. Usually it isn't noticed, but there is a small closet to the side of the room. In there are all the living corpses of loved ones that will never stop haunting me. That door is kept under lock and key- opening it releases a flood of emotions I don't want to deal with. In the back of the larger room there is a door that leads to another hall on the right, and a staircase going down right ahead of you.

If you'd gone down the other hall, you'd have entered a huge ballroom that could have and would have been magnificent if not for the damage that has happened. This is my romance. The tapestries have been ripped to ribbon-like shreds and the wallpaper is faded and peeling. The high ceiling is cracked and looks like it will collapse inward at any given moment. And there are the chandeliers. Crystalline glass prisms that have crashed to the dull marble floor and shattered into hundreds of thousands of tiny fragments. Be careful not to cut your feet on the broken glass as you walk to the back of the room into another hallway. Right and up a staircase that leads you to a door ahead or another hallway on the left. No matter whether you take the upward or the downward hall initially, you'll still end up in the same place.

This hall is a long one, with lots of twists and turns and it's always getting longer, because the walls are lined with all my memories. I can see when I said my last goodbye to the family dog when I was five. I can read about how I felt like a princess when I learned to sing 'Silent Night' in German in the third grade. I can look at the outcast I was in fourth grade when we studied the medieval period. I can watch myself cry when I discovered we were moving, and recall all the schools I went to and all the friends I never had in elementary school. I can read what I wrote about the first day of seventh grade and the feeling of finally belonging after 12 years of isolation. I can remember having to leave that behind again to enter high school, and then I found a place here, too. I can watch myself die and be brought back to life better than I was before... I've relived all the sorrow and tears and pain as well as the laughter and joy and love. This hallway is one of my favorites to walk through because I can see in it everything that has created me. This hall is always getting longer as I make new memories, those of school dances and more hours spent at school than at home and becoming friends with my grandparents. 

At the end of this hallway is where I keep the essence of me. It's a library that started out small at first but has grown as I have become more and more human. There are shelves and shelves of books that hold my identity. Some of these books I've never even opened, unwilling to find out more about myself than I want to know. But there are others I read constantly. They tell me about who I am on a deeper level than most people will ever know. They tell me what helps me discover myself. They tell me where I turn when I need to escape. They tell me what heals me. This library is my sanctuary. Sometimes I let someone borrow a book or two or three, but I've never let anyone in before. I keep the library in the best condition I can. If my library is in order I can handle anything. Sometimes I lose it and my library faces the consequences, but I always set it to rights again, and then I cherish it even more than before. When I feel lost in life, I go to my library and then I don't feel so lost.

My mind is sort of like a labyrinth, but I'd guess it's a lot like yours. I've almost gotten lost inside my own mind, though, and it's time to leave. Time to retrace my steps back through the memories and love and stress to where I began. Thanks for coming with me.