Jar of Poisoned Memories

Inspired by Adele's song "Turning Tables" and also inspired by life and the subconscious, per usual.

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Next time, I'll be braver.
Next time, I'll be my own savior.

I had a dream that I was strong. That I belonged. To myself.
I dreamt that the waves crashed over me, covering me in a bath of clean, the crests white and frothy like a cappuccino, and you caressed my skin as though it were a baby's. I dreamt that we dipped our toes into the sand and it was wet and grainy and felt delicious. We laughed. I pinched you so hard you bled and tears collected in your eyes. It made me excited.
The next day you didn't call. Or I didn't answer. I won't know which, because I had tossed my phone into the toilet, or was it the ocean? I'll never speak to you or anyone again. I'll just skip in the grass garden of my heart, where leaves fall from the trees, and flowers smell like flowers, and honey summons the bees, and I feel serene. Then dark shadows came. I ran for shelter, but there was none. I saw you lurking, you wore a hood, and you didn't have a face. But I didn't fear you this time. I ran to you and scoffed into the dark, cavernous hole where your head should be. I laughed so hard I fell onto the ground and I rolled down the hill.
The day after, I sat alone, on a cloud. Or was it my pillow? I don't know the difference. When I am strong, I lose focus. I forget who I am and where I'm going, because I try so hard to be brave and to fight and to forget. I forget to forget. Remember to forget! I say it, over and over. Then I forget what I'm trying to remember to forget. I do remember I was sitting on white. I held my pencil to my lips, the eraser felt like a piece of bubble gum and I had to scold myself when I tried to chew it. My journal was empty. You were gone and so were my words. I tried to write, but the pencil had no lead. I felt you behind me. I breathed you in, smelled your scent, heard your beating heart. When I turned around, you slapped me. With your words, of course. So I stood up, and I took my pencil and I wrote hateful things about you, in capital letters, across the walls and the ceiling and then I bit off my eraser and spit it out so it could not be used. Then I remembered the pencil had no lead.
The following day, I sat Indian style, with a jar of jellybeans, searching for watermelon, with the fleshy pink insides - the way you liked it. I let the watermelon beans collect in the folds of my dress, and then I picked out all the good flavors and left the ones you hated: cinnamon, buttered popcorn, and being nice. The next time I saw you, I was going to give this jar to you as a passive aggressive present. It made me giddy.
The next week - for days had passed of nothingness and so much that I can't recall any of it - I waited impatiently in the rocking chair. I rocked so hard, I fell right through to the wood floor. I stood up and paced around the room. You told me you'd come. You'd left a note on my door. A little yellow post-it  that said "I'll be there" - I had assumed you'd meant today. I thought I knew you. I thought you'd be here by now. But you weren't. But you're not. I guess you were only there when you wanted to be, not when I needed you to be.
A month went by and I was dry and bare as a turkey bone at the end of a big Thanksgiving meal. I wandered off the plate looking for my meat, but it had been eaten by the fat uncle who always sat at the end of the table and demanded the leg. It was swallowed and digested, and I had to accept that I was a mere bone now, about to be tossed to the dog. I scampered off the table, or I suppose I fell off, and succumbed to my fate of entering a slobbering mouth. This wasn't very brave, this wasn't very strong. I had failed.
A year's gone by. That's funny. It makes me smile. But when I look in the mirror, I look like I'm smelling a bad smell, because the smile looks forced and my nose is scrunched and my eyes water. I guess it's not funny. A year of trying to be a man, a pirate, a warrior has gone by, but I'm a withered, unwatered fern leaf. I'm brown, not green, and I've fallen off the plant. I wonder what's happened to you. I only imagine because we don't speak. I thought we were connected, so I guess. And when I see your hands, and the way you walk, and your feet under your sheets, and your blinking eyes, it feels very real, but it's not. If you were a figment of my imagination I could control you. But unfortunately you're real. I think. So I have to let you go, and free you. Once my budgerigar, Sky, was let out of his cage, and his wings weren't clipped so he flew out and he never came back. I thought he loved me. The next day it rained. I was certain he had died. He didn't know how to survive. My mom told me he probably flew off to some exotic tropical land and was eating banana chips. I cried and cried and felt abandoned and angry. We should have clipped his wings, but we were trying to spare him.

Next time I will inflict the pain.
Next time I will know better.