Aurora - The dawn

They say that only those faces come in your dreams which you’ve seen at least once in your life. The brain, as magnificent and ingenious as it is does not possess the ability to create new faces. Or does it? 

A red-haired 18-year old sat at the window seat of her bedroom, looking out at the small world she could see through the rectangular frame. She glanced out. The sky was a hue of purple and black, the stars like small lightbulbs twinkling away, the clouds playing hide and seek with the moon, and passersby would stop and swoon. It was beautiful. It was beautiful knowing that even though most things in existence lost their element, nature had not, even after millions of years, lost it. 

This was a first for Aurora. To sit down and really calm down to think about things. Even the bad ones. But you couldn’t blame her for the lack of introspection, life had become too fast for those running after it. What was even weirder was that she didn’t know why she was doing it today of all days, just that she was. She should’ve been elated at the fact that today she turned 18 and now she would graduate in a few months. A new life awaited her. But here she sat, after her own amazing party, empty, lonely, and melancholic as sometimes even the moon appeared to be. 

But she couldn’t think of herself so highly and put herself on the same pedestal as the moon. No, no she believed that she was insignificant and rather like those flickering streetlights that give up even before the night is over. A light but really useless and vain.

 Aurora never really understood why things went wrong for her. She understood that life had ups and downs but she was tired of it all. She was tired of only living in the down, of only being smothered by people, words, emotions, and whatnot. It was always felt like she was searching for something but could never find it. Not in her friends, not in her family, not in clothes or food or anything or anyone. 

Having everything yet nothing and she never understood what any of this meant, what life meant if she couldn’t even be happy with what she did have if she couldn’t even resist the urge to sabotage what was good because what was the point of it anyways.

So many problems, so many arguments, so many decisions to make, so much drama, so many lies and secrets (of her own and those of others as well). So much of so much. 

She always had someone to blame, someone to accuse and at this point, she was tired of pointing out the bad people in her life because it was literally everyone now. How could it be possible that everyone was bad? Or was anyone actually bad..or was she just making it worse? Everyone and everything felt like an enemy.

To add to it all, she couldn’t rid herself of that one damn nightmare. Sometimes she’d get a few hours of sleep if she was lucky but on those unlucky days, which were often, she’d get scant. It was bizarre really. Her reality was exhausting enough and now the one part of her life that was supposed to be a rest stop was another marathon. Quite literally too because every time she’d have that nightmare, she would be running for her life. Why? 

Because someone was trying to kill her. 

The first time she had that dream was when she was 10 and had just finished her first day of high school. It wasn’t the worst and it wasn’t the best so she didn’t know what could’ve triggered a lifetime’s worth of the same nightmare. Did something switch insider her? In a mere day? 

She had fallen asleep early that day and her mind had tuned into her subconscious to generate precarious, peculiar dreams. 

Aurora was in a vast field of flowers. What beautiful flowers they were and Aurora loved flowers. Of course, to her 12-year-old mind, those flowers were like any other but she now knew that those were begonias. She took her botanical classes very seriously. 

She stood there for a while, inhaling the fresh air and letting the serenity of the natural landscape calm her. It was soon after that she heard a rustle behind her. Young Aurora turned around to find a girl, much older, however, standing at a distance not so far. 

The girl was wearing a blue silk gown, the wind making its end dance, and she was wearing a wreath of the same begonias. She looked like a god yet so delicate and ordinary. However, she couldn’t make out her face. 

Aurora was amazed at the sight. She smiled happily at the fact that she was going to meet some sort of princess-goddess. But the smile quickly fell off her face as the sky, once blue and calm, turned dull and dark. And everything turned upside down. 

She now stood in a room, walls painted white as if she was in a mental asylum. No doors and no windows. Panic started to rise in little aurora’s heart as her mind tried to make sense of it all. Her eyes frantically scanned the room trying to find an escape or source of reassurance that she was going to be okay but she, unfortunately, found none. Her legs refused to move, afraid that one move and things would change for the unknown again. 

But she mustered up the courage and turned around to have a better look at the room only to feel a cold sensation of metal in the middle of her head as soon as she turned around. 

Aurora froze in her tracks, eyes blown wide, mouth agape, and body still. There stood a girl in front of her, much alike in physique and familiarity to the one she saw before in the blue gown. Aurora tried to see the girl’s face but for some reason, she couldn't despite the fact that they were literally in each other’s faces. She didn’t know if it was tears because of how terrified she felt or because she was about to faint. 

But this one looked more like a killer. Not per se because of her looks but because of what she was holding. 

The girl was dressed in all black and she held a silver beretta at Aurora’s head. Right in the middle. Her heart was racing and she had no idea what to do. Before she could make a move, she heard a click and saw the girl’s fingers, covered by a leather glove, pushing the trigger. 

And Aurora woke up. 

Sometimes Aurora had the chance to run, sometimes a door would appear but every time it’d be too late because she would hear the click and she knew she was done. 

Now as she sat by the window, rethinking everything and contemplating every aspect of her life she realized something. 

Well, not something she could put into words but it was a feeling like a flower had bloomed in her heart after finding something real or like when you would be on the edge of finding the answer to a maths question. That excitement, that anxiety, that tenseness of whether she had grabbed onto the right thing or was it another misstep? 

Before she could think any further, a bird flew in out of nowhere making her lose her balance, and she fell headfirst onto the floor. Aurora lost consciousness. 

She was back in that same field and the sky turned dark yet again and she was back in the white room. 

Aurora sighed and turned back, knowing what was coming. And this time she didn’t even try to escape or save herself. She, yet again, felt the cold metal on her skin and she looked at the girl trying for the 1000th to see who it was. But she was done. She’d just ask the girl herself who she was. Why hadn’t she done that before? 

As Aurora prepared herself to speak before the inevitable would happen, her eyes, surprisingly, could make the face of the girl out better than before. It was still hazy but it was as if a thick curtain of smog had cleared up. If she was blind before, she had better eyesight now it seemed. 

So she stared hard at the person standing in front of her, who was ready to kill with a gun. 

“W-Who a-are y-you?” Aurora stuttered but kept her ground. 

The figure smiled, Aurora could make that much out from the way the skin around the other’s face stretched upwards and then it whispered,

“I’m you”. 

Aurora's vision cleared up as though she had just been given eyes and she could now see the face of the girl wholly and clearly. It was as if time had stopped and everything was falling apart yet coming together. 

All this time, it had been herself. She was trying to kill herself internally with the intrusive thoughts, with that unsatisfied heart of hers, with that overthinking mind that couldn’t ever stop doing its job in such a futile manner. 

The girl lowered the gun, “It took you long enough.”. 

If she could never look at herself and who she was with her flaws and talents then how could she ever change anything? If she never saw her own mistakes, how could she even fix them or refrain from making them again? If she never tried to see her own flaws, how would she embrace or overcome them? And if she could never look at her own potential, then how could she ever grow? 

How could Aurora be happy when she wasn’t even living? A plant needs its root as much as it needs the sun.

All this time she was looking outside, at what was around her but she forgot to look at what was inside. But Aurora understood that what is within you can live without. What is around us is just as important as what is within. 

She understood that she was her own biggest enemy. How could Aurora ever live when she couldn’t even make peace with her biggest enemy who is herself?

For sometimes you, yourself, are the biggest enemy you need to face. For sometimes, the answer is in the problem itself.