PAINTING REALITY

by Linda S Barth

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
      ~ Frida Kahlo

Catherine prodded her crumpled pillows, then leaned back to watch the darkness beyond her bedroom recede to pearl grey dawn. She wished the dream haunting her night after night would fade as quickly, but she knew it wouldn’t.

She wiped away tears cooling on her flushed cheeks. The dream was one she’d almost forgotten, its hold on her having weakened months ago. Wonderful, miraculous months. Walls dismantled brick by emotional brick, doubts defeated one after the other like falling dominoes, pathways curving out of shadows, leading into light. Delicious, delightful change illuminated by sunlight, in candlelight.

So, why this, why now?

She didn’t want to remember the dream, not all of it, but she could not escape. It haunted her like an uninvited ghost. A dual personality of joy and horror, hope and despair.

Exhausted from too many hours of shattered sleep, her eyes fluttered and closed. Somewhere between drowsing and waking, the dream images blanketed her once again, smothering promise and light…

Summer sunlight glistening through his hair, in her eyes, on their lips. Their hands clasped, their feet wandering over the pliant grass of the park.

His voice soft and sighing, full of wonder, laced with disbelief. “Catherine, how can this be?”

Her voice sure and steady, full of certainty, framed with promise. “Because it’s what I wished for, more than anything.”

Lying on a picnic blanket, yearning toward each other, murmuring words of wonder, words of love.

Hope and longing in his heart. “If only it could last forever…”

Faith and certainty in hers. “It can. It will!”

Her eyes flashed open a heartbeat before the dream’s final tragic images appeared. Even though she knew with all her heart it would never happen, she could not bear to see Vincent walk away from her, to see another man take his place, even in this distorted fantasy world.

She rose and wandered into the living room, trailing an inevitable path to the balcony doors, drifting out onto the cool, night-dampened tiles. Beyond and below, the park began to glisten through the last wisps of springtime mist. Soon, sparkles of sunlight would warm the balcony, that precious space between two worlds where their lives were shared and blended, where dreams and wishes could become real.

The place where dreams were nearly destroyed forever by a madman’s distorted vision.

She shuddered and shoved that memory from her soul, replacing it with ones she would never forget. That night, so recently passed, had been much more than a nightmare. It had been a beautiful progression of possibilities. Vincent at the threshold of her apartment, about to take a momentous step forward; Vincent reaching out with less than a heartbeat of time to spare, leading her back to the life she craved beyond all others; Vincent holding her tighter and tighter, forcing away the frigid darkness, heating and healing her with the strength of his love.

That was reality. That was truth.

She sighed heavily. But it wasn’t the only reality, the only truth. Coming together for moments, being parted for days. Doors unlocked, swinging open, then slamming shut. Gifts offered only to be torn from their hands. She was so very tired of it all.

She rested her elbows on the edge of the balcony wall and felt the budding warmth of an April morning open to her. She knew that somewhere in candleglow his face mirrored hers, an image of faith and yearning despite the lingering shadows.

There would always be moments of “what if” and “I wish.” It was inevitable. But life was more than hopes and dreams and somedays that always seemed to drift off into an untethered future. Life was real. It was here and now. And if life was a story, they needed to write it with their own words.

She loved and trusted Vincent with all her heart, but it was past time to set aside old beliefs, those truths that were no longer valid – warnings about moving forward with caution and care, tendrils of plans stunted by maybe and perhaps, misty promises of somedays that never dawned.

A smile fluttered in her eyes as she recalled a favorite poster she’d taped up in her freshman dorm room at Radcliffe. That Emerson quotation had been her mantra then, another point in her life when dreams could become real.

“Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.”

It was time to breach another space separating desire from fulfillment. Maybe that’s what the dream’s persistence had been trying to tell her. Together they would find the strength to change the way the ending played out. Next time, the lips caressing hers would be his, and when she opened her eyes, he would still be at her side.

His long ago words whispered in her heart. “You have the strength, Catherine, you do.”

Her smile grew as bright as the rising sun, as strong a flaring torch. “So do you, Vincent. So do you.”

She turned and looked toward the balcony doors and the threshold he had almost crossed. Next time, they would cross it together.

And there would be no more looking back.