Susan in Wonderland

Chapter 8

Susan wished that she hadn't felt so hopeless, but that is the reality when you fall in love with someone. Thinking of Henry, she found herself crying an endless number of tears. This was a dream that one could not wake from and in spite of wishing so badly to be a part of this world, she felt herself be pulled back to memories past.

She had always been bullied - that was much for certain. Carried a strangeness about her that pulled her apart from other people. Call it a kid's intuition, but she was always in a world that was different from others. She could see people for who they were, not for whom they pretended to be. It frightened the other kids, and it caused her to turn away from herself. That bullying left an emptiness to be filled by romantic love, even when it couldn't be.

Now the future, that far off distant fear, is also present in the past of others. It never felt more truer with Susan for she was able to see the future just as clearly as the past in how it would fall apart. So much expectation is put on the youth - to be all they are supposed to be, to accomplish great things, to find love. They don't even know who they are.

Susan could see clearly that Henry would never truly love her. He would always be distant. He rose higher above the landscape, standing right up there with the stars, reminders of things that could be but may not. It wouldn't matter if he were anyone else short, tall, black, white, Catholic, Atheist. The love wouldn't ever be eternal because people never were.

Just like a shooting star falling out of the sky, she sure enough appeared in front of Susan to stare at and speculate upon who she is. This sparkly, silverly white woman with a shimmering gown of iridescent stars that seemed to glitter all over her dress. Her skin glowed the color of moonlight.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Why I'm Rhea," the woman replied. "The Lady of Dreams. Wife to the great Ol Saturn, that faithful master of time. Now tell me dear, why have you arrived in this place?"

"I'm great-granddaughter of Alice Liddell Kingsley. She used to come here, or at least I think she did."

"Tell me what this place is," Rhea mused, staring hard at Susan. "Are we there right now, in this 'Wonderland' as your grandmother called it?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure," confessed Susan. "I am never able to tell what is real or what is fiction in dreams."

With the flickering of her hands, a swath of stars appeared in the sky, lightening it up like a blanket of jewels.

"You're not sure what is really 'real' and what is truly fiction. If I told you that everything you imagine changes as you change it. You create the reality that is in dreams based on what is going on in real life. Everything is a mirror, and you exist in every time. Sure, you exist on Earth, but you also exist in Wonderland. You are also dead, and alive. You are everywhere at once."

Susan as able to see then quite clearly Henry, except he was dating someone else, and he very clearly seemed indifferent to the thoughts of her that had once fluttered through his head. He loved her. He was happy. A gnaw hunger started to eat away at Susan's heart, until everything around me turned into dark vines and gnawed looking trees.

"What is going on?" Susan cried. "Why is he doing this?"

Rhea just laughed and said, "You truly believe in the constancy of the human-heart? My dear girl, you are quite divorced from the reality of things. Don't you know that everyone is going to leave you? Your brothers will move on, your sister will forget, all of your friends will be nothing but distant memories. High school does not last forever."

Susan began to cry again, but she was swimming now and the water was getting higher now. She was unable to keep herself above the water as she felt herself drowning beneath the waves, and she thrashed trying to find her way out. Yet, as the tears fell harder, causing her head to throb, she heard the twinkly laugh of that same woman. Now she was standing next to Henry, holding onto his arm, and kissing him.

As she was floating about this mess, she realized that there was a swimming mouse right next to her. Now, she had never seen a mouse so big, and it immediately frightened her to see it, but the mouse acted as if it was not afraid of her. It eyed her fear as if she were judging the mouse herself, and the mouse was quite offended by this.

"Hasn't anyone told you that it is quite rude to stare?"

She remembered now where she was. This was Wonderland. The twinkly lady was gone, and so was the image of Henry too.

"Why did you cry so much you stupid girl?" asked the Door Mouse. "Don't you know it's in poor taste to cry? Nobody is going to love you if you don't love yourself. Your tears have created a ruckus throughout all of the 6 kingdoms, and now they are going to be wandering through this terrain trying to find the source of your crying. Why am I even trying to explain this to you?"

"I'm sorry," said Susan, choking back another sob. "It's just that I realized that everyone I ever love is going to leave me, and I'm not sure I can handle what is going to come."

"No one is going to be able to handle what is to come," said the Door Mouse. "I know that death will come to me, but I am not going to waste my time listening to you cry about it."

With that, the mouse swam away from her, leaving her alone again. Day turned quickly to night once more, leaving Susan to wonder if the encounter with the Door Mouse all in her head was also. She heard faintly the sound of the Caterpillar, and he was quite frustrated with her.

"You remember that this is all a dream, correct?" he asked. "Your Alice-mother was far more able to take care of these things than you were. She had more control of her emotions."

"That can't be true!" shouted Susan. "She cried too!"

"That perverted Carroll, he hated women. Always wrote trash about how they can't do this or that, how they are all unhinged. No, my dear, your great grandma was more than capable of handling her own, but the question is whether you are."

A twinge of smoke seems to entwine itself around Susan's nostrils, causing her to cough.

"You seem to think that this is all a dream, remember? As long as you treat it like a dream, you won't be able to navigate its waters. Focus," he breathed.

Susan closed her eyes and took a deep breath, allowing herself to stop fighting the waves and find her footing. Yes, deep breath in, deep breath out. She was floating now, and the waves were as calm as a pond lying still in a meadow. She breathed again, and it was as if all the water had drenched into the beautiful grass, causing the flowers to pop out from underneath their hiding space. She was able to find her own feet as they made a soft landing on the grass.

Squeezing the excess water out of her hair, she looked around and found herself in the most beautiful of gardens. There were animals made out of plants - relics of giants that must have once been able to move around at great will. She was quite small in this wild-overgrown treasure that was once tamed. The White Rabbit was there, staring at her, as if he had never been late at all. His eyes looked tired.

"So, you're the descendant," he mused, looking as if he hadn't had any coffee. "It's funny, you think that you are being productive for a period of time, then you find out that you have chased yourself into a complete exhaustion. There's no end to human obsession, didn't you know? So, when humans decided to forget who they were, they had to invents worlds for their self-conscientiousness to throw themselves in, so they don't have to think about who they are."

She felt her eyes glaze over at these words, as if she were being put in a long trance.

"How many hours have you stared at your phone Susan? You're like the youngest and you cannot come to terms with it. You cannot fulfill all those goals even if you tried. There are a million iterations of all your potential selves, and you will always be chasing possibilities that you will never be able to follow. Rabbit holes that you will never find the end to, and you mistakenly think that there's an end to this self-improvement cycle."

He looked tired as he waved a paw over her eyes.

"Sleep dearie, there is far more worse challenges that are coming your way."