Vincent & Victoria

A Story by PANDORA

The first part of the story

VINCENT & VICTORIA

VICTORIA

It was the beginning of fall when I arrived in New York. God, how I had missed the changing of seasons. The leaves crackled under my feet as I made my way from the cab up the steps to what was going to be my temporary home. I paused before I opened the door to the building and let it set in that I was finally here. Goal set. Goal close met. For me that was huge. I never finished what I started but I was here to do something and not anything less than death was going to stop me. Every story has a beginning, middle and end. I am starting in the middle as I was never one to go in order but the end is coming soon and the beginning is very simple.

It started with a dream, a literal dream. One night I closed my eyes and there he was. One night turned into two and two to four and soon I was dreaming of him every night. Well, maybe not of him, as he was an active participant in all of the dreams. Sometimes I would show up and he would be waiting for me, other times it would be me waiting for him. The strangest part of all of this was that when I woke the dream did not fade and I remembered every detail. Someone told me that was called, “lucid dreaming” because I knew I was dreaming. Call it what you want but it was as real as the life I have with my eyes open. More real if that is even possible and the emotions I felt were tangible. I would wake up laughing out loud and for a split second I could not tell if I was awake or still asleep. The feeling of love was unlike anything I had every felt before or since. I ached and missed him the second he was gone wanting nothing more than to close my eyes and be with him again. I started going to bed earlier and earlier until my life was nothing but work and sleep. Sometimes I would skip eating dinner for days and jump into bed with my work clothes still on. I cared about nothing but him. My life did not start until I closed my eyes. It was all consuming and almost destroyed me. One insignificant day I was sitting in traffic and I realized I had to stop. Break up with this man who did not exist. I sat in that car and started both laughing and crying at the sheer craziness of it. I had lost count of the time I wasted sleeping and hiding away from the real world. The blaring live world going on all around me that I had numbed myself against. I was running straight to this fantasy life I had created for myself forsaking everything else. It was my drug and I needed help. At least that is what I thought at the time and that is exactly what I did. The next day I started therapy and sleeping pills.

The cocktail of therapy and sleeping pills worked for awhile. I started seeing him less and less though he never fully disappeared. He lurked in the shadows and wings as if waiting for me to come back to him. I did not give in and fought to keep him at a distance and would often wake up with fresh tears on my face and a feeling of loss so deep it seemed to reach my soul. I went on with what was normal life as I know it, but everything seemed drab and dull. I had no real pleasure and the moments of happiness very fleeting. Now, with my eyes both open and closed, I was miserable. I longed for the days when sleep would overcome me and I would find myself on the other side, in love, happy, and needed. The funny thing is that my fantasy relationship was just like any other relationship. We fought, laughed, cried, and yelled but would always end up in each others arms; right where we were suppose to be. I was convinced I was crazy. The only one who knew about my dream obsession was my therapist, and I think even she thought I was crazy so strong was my conviction in this made up love. Time passed. I can’t tell you how much because the days all fused into another and then it happened. The thing that would forever change my life. I saw him! No, not in a dream but real life. Well, sort of real life. I was flipping through the channels late one night and there he was. I froze and then started shaking. This could not be. My eyes were playing tricks, I was tired, I was finally over the f*****g edge, something, anything but this. I had worked so hard on forgetting but there he stood just as I saw him in my dreams. He talked the same, laughed the same, walked the same, same, same, and same. I really did not know what to do. I turned off the TV, counted to twenty, and turned it back on. S**t, still there. I turned the TV back off and did not turn it on again. I lie still in one position until dawn, then dusk and dawn again. Only getting up to go to the bathroom and then back into the same position. The phone rang, birds chirped, horns honked, dogs barked but none of it got through to me. Though my body was still, my mind was anything but. It raced and spun so fast I could not keep up. I was sure I was going to end up in the State Hospital if I told my therapist this new turn of events. At that time it did not seem like a bad idea to me. The only answer I could come up with was that I must have hallucinated from lack of return to my fantasy land. Either that or a very, very large tumor. When I finally got the courage to get out of bed I called my therapist and told her I had an emergency and needed to see her right away. She asked why, I told her I was hallucinating, she said come right away.

My therapist has one of those annoying nasally voices that could pain the deaf. I half listened to her tell me I was projecting which was of course the only explanation she could have possibly come up with. You see, the thing about therapy is you know the question before they ask it and you know the correct answer. The trick is saying the truth instead of the obvious answer. I wanted to tell her to go to hell but “projecting” was better then being insane. She went on and on and I eventually just tuned her out and wondered what my mind had planned for me next. I left her office feeling worse then when I went in. I walked for blocks and prayed to a God I might or might not believe in asking for mercy and/or forgiveness for whatever I had done to anger him. I begged to have my life back. The almost sane life before the dreams and delusions. Finally, I asked for a sign. Then I went home turned on the TV and waited.

I held my breath until the same time I had seen him at last approached. What was I going to do if he….wait not even possible. Then there he was, and he was not he anymore his name was Vincent. This time I stayed calm. I had been working on my own theory that sort of coincided with my nasally therapist. Maybe I had seen him on TV and that is what made me “project’ him into my dreams. I did not remember ever seeing him but I must have. That is the only logical answer. I repeated this theory over and over until I half believed it. That night I did not dream and awoke relieved having thought God had heard my prayer. What a sense of humor God has. Vincent was soon back in my dreams and everyday on my TV screen. It took me five months to save for a plane ticket to New York and enough rent for about two months. My final two months as fate would have it. I did not know it at the time but I was dying.

So, now we are back to the beginning of mine and Vincent’s story. Well, technically the middle but as I write this time is waning and like I said I was never one to follow directions.

New York in the fall. No other place like it.

© 2015 PANDORA

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Kelsey Schadt

I like the voice you create by writing in first person. You say that you are starting in the middle, but then almost immediately write it all started in the beginning. I get what you mean, by explaining that by being in NY is probably the middle, but I'd expand on this a bit before you go into the beginning, only to make the statement, " I am starting in the middle as I was never one to go in order but the end is coming soon and the beginning is very simple." more poignant.