I want to Don't want to wake up

I wake up. Again. Sometimes I scream, sometimes I don’t. It doesn’t matter. It always plays out like I screamed.

My bedroom door opens. My older sister is there. I love her. I hate her.

“Are you okay, I heard screaming? Did you have a nightmare?”

I’ve heard so many variations on that line. Sometimes she leads with a joke. Every now and then she acknowledges the fact I’m not screaming and it’s been years and it keeps happening and I have hope for a moment and then another her barges in, and knocks my hope to the ground. It always happens.

The version of my sister that knew what was happening gets touched from a version that doesn’t. She stiffens and falls. Her skin will go cold. She won’t respond to anything. Even pain. Even death. More sisters will barge in, but the latest one will supersede any older ones she touches. I end up with an ever growing mass of them spilling out my door. I can do pretty much anything from there. Leave, go eat, whatever. No sister can get far enough into questioning me before getting touched by a newer one. I’ve checked, there’s always one waking up in her bed, but even though she gets up another one is there. They never run out.

I don’t know how long this has been happening. I used to think it started when I was younger, but maybe that’s just as far back as I can remember. I can barely recall a life outside of this endless cycle of waking up and having countless sisters cancel eachother out. It’s been years. The bed I sleep in is too small for me now. The clothes I wake up in too small. I used to scream. Now it’s all too normal. Eventually I’ll go back into screaming. It happens.

One time I ran out of the house, tried to get the neighbors. Their door didn’t work, the handle didn’t turn and knocking on it only made a dull, plasticy noise. My sister came and she knocked to apologize, and then the door knocked for real and the handle turned and she got knocked down before the door started opening. She’s real. For a while. I’m not. The world doesn’t respond to me. I’m not real here. Except to her. But everything is real to her. Does her waking up make me exist?

I’ve started to wonder if my whole life has been like this. If this is what reality is. If ideas of parents and rain and people and animals are just thinks I made up vague memories of out of some long forgotten desperation to pretend I live in the ‘normal’ world that became part of my mind. Maybe I was born like this. Maybe I’ve been like this for eternity. My only way of measuring the passage of time is by my own growth, so maybe I just age on a century long scale.

I’m getting tired. I’ve just been sitting here, watching copies pile up for hours. I lay back down, I fall asleep. I wake up immediately. Sometimes I scream, sometimes I don’t. It doesn’t matter. It always plays out like I screamed.

My bedroom door opens. My older sister is there. I love her. I hate her.

“Hey, what's up, did you have a nightmare?”

I want to wake up. Really wake up. Have one sister appear, no more. I don’t want to wake up anymore. I’m so tired. I fall asleep. I wake up. Again. Sometimes I scream, sometimes I don’t. It doesn’t matter. It always plays out like I screamed.

My bedroom door opens. My older sister is there. I love her. I hate her.

“Is something wrong, I thought I heard you scream?”

I want to wake up. I don’t want to wake up.