95. I Don't Remember

“I would never laugh at your pain. I know you are going through something and I would never, ever make fun of your trauma.” I assure him sincerely, yet the furious thumping of his heart doesn’t slow down, revealing the inner turmoil hidden beneath him.  

“Dakota..” I call his name softly. 

I wait for him to respond, but all I can hear is his heavy breath fanning at the back of my neck. I draw my fingers towards his hand, which clutches my waist like his last thread of sanity, and I touch him gently, offering comfort. 

“I know it is hard to live alone, without a family. But you should be so proud of yourself for building yourself up from the scratch, without anybody’s help.”

I hope my words encourage him, yet he remains discouragingly silent. Could it be possible, that underneath that heartless domineering facade, there is a man who is more heart-broken than I am?

“And honestly, everybody has flaws. I myself am a flawed person. At times, I feel this overwhelming feeling of anxiety kicking in whenever I try to talk to people.” A wave of vulnerability washes over me as I whisper the buried parts of my soul. 

“I myself feel so damaged. I have no friends, no social interactions, I hardly go out of my room because the outside world terrifies me. I am so scared to have another bad experience as the last one broke me completely.”

My voice cracks with sadness, feeling pity at the little girl in me, who still struggles to overcome the ingrained traumas she has endured. 

“I see people around me, so carefree and extroverted, and I wish.. I wish I could be like them. There is so much I want to share, but whenever I try, all I feel like I am drowning in my social anxieties. Then panic kicks in and I feel unable to reach out, even for help. I know am not normal. Hell, I am not even myself anymore, but a product of anxieties.”

I pause, feeling the tightness in my chest. I close my eyes, letting the tears spill over, feeling them trail a path down into the pillow beneath.

“But it’s okay now.” I take a deep, shaky breath and stare at the plain walls of his empty room. 

“I have realized that everyone has a dark side, demons they are scared to face. So it is completely fine if you are scared of darkness.” 

A sudden need to console him takes over me and I gently squeeze his hand, offering my support. 

“We are all flawed, aren’t we? Our imperfections make us human. They remind us that nobody is perfect, and there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

A deep sigh escapes me at the release of pent-up emotions from my locked heart and suddenly, I feel light, as if a heavy rock has been lifted from my chest. 

I can’t understand me. The pain that had been buried deep, spilled out in the presence of a man I thought I despised more than anyone else. 

Dakota lies behind me silently, just like the room. His soft breathing gets to my head like a lullaby and just as I am about to close my eyes, I hear him speak..

“I am not normal either.” 

He quietly whispers, so hush as if he is talking to himself.

“I hear voices in my head.” He continues, his voice so low, it’s barely audible, almost lost in the silence.

“What voices?” I whisper back, calmly. 

“I..” I listen as he draws in a deep, tremulous breath that seems to carry the weight of unspoken fears. 

And it startles me to see this man, who is always brewing with confidence and arrogance, now cowering in nervousness.

“What is it?” I ask him. *What is it?* My anxieties also question anxiously. 

*If there is something that making him this nervous, then it must be a very serious thing!* 

“I hear voices..” Dakota mumbles in a daze, “Like someone is inside me. Someone who is watching everything I do and someone who wants me to act as he wishes. And sometimes, that someone takes over me and becomes me.”

A chill runs down my spine, as his words slowly settle into the deeper parts of my brain. I always sensed something was wrong with his head. But I never thought it would be this terrible.

“Dakota..” I hold on to my breath as I whisper my worst fear. “Do you-you have Schizophrenia?” 

My heart is beating fast, lashing in and out as I wait for him to deny me. *Please tell me I am wrong! Tell me I am delulu!*

“Not really, just borderline.” His words contradict himself, confusing me more. 

“In medical terms, it is called Schizoaffective Auditory Hallucination.”

Spider crawls down my neck in absolute fright at his revelation. I am so darn afraid to even ask what is it!

“I hear growls, sometimes strange animal noises and then whispers, which at times turn into roars. Fuck! It’s so scary to be able to hear these sounds in my head, when no one else can hear it. It still frightens me.” 

*Oh. My. God!* My eyes, mouth, ears, all wide in a spine-chilling shock. 

“Have you been hearing them since your childhood?” I remain calm, and ask him even calmly, though my insides are thrashing panickingly. 

“No! I wasn’t always like this. I.. Fuck! Emara!” Dakota growls frustratingly, sounding like he is on the verge of exploding into a million tiny fragments of wrath. But then I hear him take a deep, unsteady breath of calmness, before he reveals..

“I don’t remember having sex with you, nor hiding your clothes, or any of the nights with you.” His heart pounding fiercely against my back. 

“It was.. not me.” He whispers, almost defeatedly.

The room seems to constrict around me, swallowing me deeper as I hear his twisted confession. *It.. wasn’t.. him?*

I feel my heart skip a dreadful beat, a trembling rhythm trying to keep up with the cyclone of emotions storming through me. 

*Not him? Then who?* The questions multiply, each one more unsettling than the last. 

“Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be strong. Stronger than my classmates who used to bully me for my feminine name, the older boys in orphanage who beat me for money and forced me to do their bidding, even the abusive people at my shift. I wanted to be stronger, powerful, to protect myself from the daily torment.” 

Suddenly, his voice grows darker, and louder with a raving anger. “I wished I was strong!”

His raw emotions beats through his chest, and I feel their intensity echoing through me in whips.

“I wished I was fucking strong enough to fight back, to beat the fucking shit out of those motherfuckers. I really wanted to go torture them all personally, one by one, like they fucking did to me.”

Dakota pauses, his breathing heavy. “But I was just a boy, and fuck I was too weak.. too powerless.”

I close my eyes, as I can practically feel the pain he has been harbouring since his childhood.

“And then one day, Max that bastard from my orphanage, demanded my earnings from night shift, and for once, I wanted to fight back. I opposed and he punched me so hard that I blacked out. And when I woke up, I came to know he was admitted in a hospital because I had savagely beaten him.”