Emily’s World


As a child, I was too young to see the reality of what was happening around me. I never had any alone time, and I could never develop my own thoughts. I was born in San Francisco, California, but after only three years I moved down to Florida. I lived in a small neighborhood, an average sized house. My father was a banker and my mother didn’t work. She would say her job was taking care of me. One of the last memories I have of my childhood was my fifth birthday party. My mom had spent months organizing and planning- it was in a small recreational center in town. I don’t remember the actual party, but what I do remember is something about my mother that has stuck in my mind forever. As I sat with her and got my princess-apparel ready for the party, and with the thought of fantastical characters in mind, she began to tell me about the life she fantasized. She told me how that what she really wanted to be was and painter. In San Francisco, she said her imagination ran wild with ideas and inspirations for her work. In Florida, she had an impossible time seeking out hidden beauty within the dry and uneventful lands of northern Florida.


A little less than a year later, my mother suddenly past away after overdosing on sleeping pills. Neither my father nor I were prepared for this. At the time, I did not and could not understand what had happened. Looking from my perspective now, I know that she was not happy. It was not my father or I who had caused her distress, but rather her own mind. She was not able to express herself, and if you had noticed the way she looked at her hands so devastatingly every night after trying to sketch something beautiful in her journal, you would see her pain. She became stuck inside her own head, and couldn’t get out. Everything she saw had lost its beauty, and she had longed to go back to where her inspiration had been. She was not someone who could complain, but rather she held herself back for the sake of my father and I, for she knew he needed to be in Florida and that I would be better off growing up here.

To this day, I cannot tell you whether or not my mother meant to die on that night. I had seen her taking pills before, more than just one or two at a time, but she always seemed to need them, or else her anxiety would come rushing through her in an even more self- destructive way. My father barely knew how bad my mother had become, and I don’t blame him for anything that has happened. After her death, he clung too me as if I were his last hope for salvation. I became his everything, and he became mine. His overprotectiveness started to become irksome, as I grew older and began once again to desire the sight and voice of my mother.


I needed to see my mother again, and so I had been sleeping. In my sleep, I could imagine whatever world I wanted. I believed that if I could dream deep enough, I could see my mother again; see her in San Francisco, a time when she was in her element. The only memories I have are during the years of her growing sorrows, but I wanted to see her painting. I imagined the masterpiece that she would have been painting if she had stayed in California; I see it as a grand abstract canvas of the world at night. She had always loved the night, and the universe that surrounded us. She had a fascination with the sky and the stars, and I see the painting that could have fulfilled her dream, and every night in my dreams I get to see more and more of it.


I am now almost thirteen, and a few weeks ago I found a hidden medicine bottle with some of the sleeping pills my mother would take, and so I have been taking some. Slowly, of course. I am not trying to have the same fate as my mother; I just want to see from where she saw. If I take them enough eventually her masterpiece will be fully revealed to me, if I take enough then I can finally meet the happy Californian mother I had never seen. I can fall farther and farther into this world inside my head. My father doesn’t know yet, and I don’t know how he will take it, but I need to finish the masterpiece.


Yesterday morning I woke up in the Hospital, with my father praying over my hospital bed. Apparently I had taken one too many of the sleeping pills. My father was crying, and I was confused. I told him it was okay; I wasn’t sick, and explained to him what I had been looking for. He continued to cry even after I had explained, I don’t know why. He must have been scared I might not wake up, like my mom, but I was fine, he couldn’t understand it. But I was so close to seeing my mother’s masterpiece being finished, I was so close.


Now, I am forced to try to escape to my dreams without my mother’s pills, my dad became too worried about me. Now whenever I want to sleep he has to tell me a story until I drift off. Sometimes I can almost grasp the dream world like I used to, but I am having a hard time seeing my mom. I love my dad, but he can’t understand, so I have to act like a normal innocent girl around him. But I am planning, a final trip into my mind to see my mother and the beauty in her final creation. I need to get just a few of those pills, and then I will be done.


I think my father is suspecting something of my plan, because ever so often when I am drifting towards my abstract dream world, my father will wake me up and have an expression on his face as if he had just seen a ghost, scared that I might be pulled forever into my dream world. I play along with him, but soon I will be able to meet my dream world again, where I really belong.