my secret nightmare
stories from an avoidant girl
sometimes i’m scared of closing my eyes. i’m scared that when i go to sleep, i’ll be met with my secret nightmare. in this nightmare, i say everything i want to. and that’s the problem.
let me preface this by saying that i love all my friends to bits. especially my best, dearest friend in the whole world. i’d like to believe and hope that none of my relationships are clearly toxic, or one sided, or fake. but everyone isn’t perfect, and neither am i.
i have this recurring nightmare where i’ve upset my best friend. usually, its a reflection of reality, when i think she’s ignoring because i’ve done something wrong, or if she’s hurt my feelings and i decide to distance myself a bit. most of the time, it’s both. the nightmare has no trouble with cutting straight to the chase. it always plays the scene where i confront her for our mutual ignorance. i muster the confidence to tell her this. when you know someone so well, you can try to guess how they’ll react to what you say. so i do- i dream up this fake scenario where she hears me out, and apologises first. but when i tell her my honest feelings, she takes this in, and uses it as fuel to grow bigger, and more furious. she chews me out, and almost always starts by saying, ‘really?’, like it’s all my fault. and the dream cuts, and i’m left on a cliffhanger.
every now and then, when i have the slightest hint of fury towards her, or anyone, the nightmare replays, like the climactic scene from a horror movie, left on loop.
my nightmare blurs the lines of imagination and reality together. it weaves the truth and the fearful scenarios i make up, creating a fabric of reality which presents itself as a prophecy to me. it makes me question- should i really confront them, even though they’ve hurt me? or will it just hurt them more than me? my nightmare whispers a fear of confrontation into my heart.
i’ve never been good at telling people that i don’t like things. i remember the day i turned 8. at the time, i detested dresses, skirts, and everything girly. my grandma handed me a present, wrapped in pink paper and sealed with a white bow. my little heart raced at the thought of a present! after all, i was only 8. under the prim, pink gift wrap was a blue and white dress. i plaster a big fat smile on my face, giving my grandma a bigger thank you hug. but my eyes have a glassy sheen coating them. i go to try on the dress, out of gratitude and love, but a tear trickles down and a few more follow. when i showed my grandma how the dress looked, i laughed through the pain, and i rushed to change back to the knee-length jean shorts and boxy top i found comfort in. although i didn’t like the dress, i hated hurting people’s feelings even more, especially when it seemed like i was making a big fuss over something i should have been grateful to get. i’ve outgrown the dress, but i haven’t outgrown the fear of making someone resent me, or feel guilty for doing something nice for me. i hope it isn’t a one size fits all.
cut to present day. now, i’m scared to tell my best friend that her ‘joke’ made me mad. recently, we were playing a game online together, when she and her sister decide to humiliate me, as a funny thing. the type of things that friends do, yknow? i won’t get into the nitty-gritty of the whole situation, but i’ll say that they made a fool of me where other people could hear. they played a short track of me, as a child 8 years ago, singing (to be honest, it wasn’t very great), in a public server. i’ve always hated when they used this clip to make fun of me. to make matters worse, my friends’ parents were there to witness it too. i could hear all four of them howling and cackling over the phone.
i was enraged. my body started to fill up with that unsettling hot air you feel when someone gets you so riled up. my hands rushed to log off the game and slam my ipad. i open my phone to send a message. i would tell my friend how she and my other friend pissed me off, and how i didn’t appreciate their parents and a public server hearing me go slightly off-key as a child. but i froze. there were already 7 unread message from my friend, and 1 missed call. maybe she apologised first?
‘HAHAHAHA’
‘my whole family was dying’
‘we were all actually crying’
the joke really wasn’t that funny. well not to me at least, yet it’s my voice that’s being broadcasted to the game. i’m glad they had a laugh, but i sure didn’t.
‘hey come back’
‘ok why have i been ghosted’
my heart sank. did she think that i was ignoring her? would this erupt into a full-blown fight again? okay then, maybe i shouldn’t say anything. i’ll just play along for a while, act a bit uncomfortable, and hope they all forget.
once again, i avoid confrontation. i get scared that my feelings will be like a snowball rolling down a hill, and crashing when it gets to the bottom. i don’t want an argument to be my fault, even though i had a completely valid reason to blow up. now, my true feelings will never surface to my friends until 2 years later, when i’ll let it all pass as a joke. a joke which stabbed me in the heart and hasn’t healed.
avoiding confrontation is my biggest weakness. when i can’t confront someone, i end up not telling anyone how i really feel. keeping everything to myself feels like that feeling when a lump of phlegm (that gooey stuff when you cough) come out from my throat, but having to swallow it back down, since it isn’t the right time or place to spit it out. my throat just feels stickier and ten times more uncomfortable, and my voice goes a bit hoarse. when i feel like i can’t tell anyone anything, my head overloads with the fear that the situation will get worse, and that i can’t save it.
i hate being timid. i hate not being able to tell someone ‘no’ or ‘i don’t like that’ to their face. i hate sacrificing my comfort, just for someone else to be happy and blissfully unaware of the parasitic thoughts that flood my head.
i don’t think i’ll ever tell anyone about my nightmare. well except for you, my reader, but i wouldn’t tell anyone i knew in real life. who knows, maybe in a year these nightmares will stop coming back. maybe in 2 years, i’ll have braved my fear of confrontation.
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