In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

Your body has a knowing. Like an antenna, attuned to tremors in the air, or a dowsing rod, tracing things so deeply buried you have no language for them yet.

College: a freedom so profound the joy of it didn’t wear off the entire four years.

I wanted them to see perfection. I ached for it in the deep, dark core of me: to be so good I left other people in the dust.

“I understand everything about you. I know you’re obsessed with making Kappa the top sorority because the Chi Os rejected you. I know you’re obsessed with Mint and the Phi Delts because everyone else is, and it’s a status symbol. I know you sneak Adderall to study all night even though econ makes you want to kill yourself. And now I know you charge thousands of dollars to a credit card you can’t afford just to fit in.”

“I’m telling you upfront. I need more. I need you over and over. So this is your out. Take it. Otherwise you’re mine, the way it should have been.”

I’m scared college was the last time I was really alive, the way you’re supposed to be, and I’ll never get it back.” “Of course college felt extreme,” Coop said. “You had infinite freedom and almost no responsibility. Nothing was fixed—you had your whole life ahead of you, and it could go anywhere. You had best friends you spent every minute with, so you were never alone. And you were in love. Real love.”

Memories are powerful things. But—and this is important, my therapist said—so are the dark spaces. The things you choose, consciously or not, to repress. Always, they’re the things you need protection from. The too much: too terrifying, too shameful, too devastating. The things that, if allowed, would threaten the very core of who you’re supposed to be.

It turns out the real you is a quilt, made up of the light and the dark. The life you’ve lived in sunshine and your shadow life, stretching underneath the surface of your mind like a deep underwater world, exerting invisible power. You are a living, breathing story made up of the moments in time you cherish, all strung together, and those you hide. The moments that seem lost.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

“In ten years,” Heather said slowly, “you’re not even going to remember the things that seem important now. You’re going to have totally different priorities. I bet you’ll look back and laugh at everything that feels so dramatic now.”

“Whatever happens, we’re going to be happy, okay? I promise. So you can stop worrying.” She took my hand and squeezed it. “Ten years from now, we’re going to be on top of the world together. You and me, looking down on everyone else, laughing and laughing.”