Nightmare in White

 Last night, I had the most horrible dream.

Recently, I've gotten the habit of sleeping on the couch, being the couch potato that I am. Most days, I'm too tired to carry my ass up to my bedroom and sleep properly on my bed. Days when I'd forget to do my night skincare and then regret it horribly the next day. 

Same case happened last night. I took a shower, ate dinner on the couch with Natsume Yuujinchou on, and fell asleep. It tends to be cold downstairs in the living room at night, and I was wearing short shorts so my legs were freezing. I briefly remember pulling a blanket over my legs in my sleep haze.

The details of my dream are hazy by now, but I can still feel the intense disgust and horror at the bottom of my throat. There was the air of something big happening, bustling noises of people moving.

There was someone walking beside me, mumbling noises in the background. Everything in my eyesight was filled the golden color, as if we were walking in a ripe wheat field by sunset. There was a clock sound.

White hems gracefully touching the golden wheat on the ground, invisible lace, and a bouquet in a pair of hands. The white carried on and on, to the top of their head. A white dress. The dress itself was lovely, I thought. Beautiful and dazzling. But when I heard the voice of the person wearing it, I could feel my heart drop to my stomach. As this person turned around to face me, I could hear my breath whizzled to a stop. 

Me. My face. Framed with a delicate satin touching my cheeks, pearls in my hair and flowers decorating my chest. Smiling at me, holding the bouquet in my hands. The presence of the other person fizzled into nothingness as I put two and two together, and I whirled around looking at my surroundings. I felt my breath shortened and shortened as I start to realize that I'm in the middle of a wedding. MY wedding. It felt like a panic attack was crawling up my lungs. 

There was a person at the end of the aisle, but I lost all details of them. 

All I could see was me, in that white dress.

I screamed at myself. 

"NO!!!"

I wouldn't do this to myself. The thought of marriage has sent me into panic attacks many times, unable to accept the horrendous life of being tied to another person forced by societal conduct and religious matrimony. I wouldn't do such a thing to myself. 

I watched myself walk down the aisle, dread and vomit piled in my stomach. I forced my real body to toss and turn, until I was able to wake up, just in time as "I" reach the other person at the end of the aisle. I woke up with cold sweat running down my neck. 

Throughout my years, I've had nightmares where I'd come home and find myself engaged to a stranger, or going through some sort of forced matrimonial situations. I've despised the politics of matrimony for as long as I can remember, beginning from my late teens, as I thought about the suffering I would have to endure if I was ever married. The world is not kind to women, and much less to wives and mothers. 

Patriarchy wouldn't let us live in peace, and society prefers us bruised and intimidated. 90% crimes are executed by spouses, and there is no guarantee that your spouse will take care of you when you are ill, stay loyal to you, and be a decent human being. There is no guarantee that the person I allowed to love me, will take advantage of my softness and beat me into the ground. 

I would rather kill myself than to allow that risk to ever become reality. 

My circumference of love is limited, and generally one-way. I don't give freebies even if it's the person I love. The Malay culture is too suffocating for me. I wouldn't be able to live the way everyone else lives, and I don't want to. I like my life, and I pity Sis in my heart when I see her sometimes.

The Malay culture devalues women in marriage too much, and I would rather be skinned alive. I'm not saying other culture isn't doing the same thing, but as a person who has only grown and seen Malay culture all my life, I would rather be boiled and beheaded than marry a Malay man. 

Not that I will ever marry. Man or otherwise. Man is a negative point, frankly. 

One day, the happiest moment I hope to reach in my life is to tie my wrist together with my bestfriend before we jump into the sea with stones in our pockets.