Hello, young lovers

You guys are going to be real surprised when you see the timestamp on this one! I've just woken up from a dream and have to impart all my new found wisdom to you before I go back to sleep. But this post is really more for me than it is for you.

I know that when it comes to romance, I'm the girl who cried wolf. My last few years have given my spectators whiplash as I frantically bounced from possibility to possibility. And I always insist that each person is different and really special and I've never felt this way before. But the truth is, whether you believe it or not, I do have a love of my life, and I haven't seen him for 15 years. I've named a lot of names in this blog, but I still don't feel I can mention his. There's still too much power there even after all this time; the dream I had just told me that.

Ever since I lost him when his family moved away right before senior year, I've had two kinds of dreams about him. In the first kind, I am reunited with him, and I remember that it's all because of one letter that one of us wrote. One letter that confessed everything, and after that there could be no doubt that we were meant to be together for eternity. And now we are together and everything is perfect. That kind of dream always makes me so sad, because the truth is that even though we supposedly had a love to span the ages (and the fact that it hasn't faded after 15 years tells me more and more that that was really true), neither of us lifted one finger to put ourselves back together after we were separated. Although our senior year separation was inevitable, we could have made plans to go to the same college, or even just kept in contact with each other enough so that a future reunion remained possible. But instead we let each other slip away for no good reason, except that we were too young to know a really good thing when we saw it. I know that on my end, everyone was sure that I was too young for it to really be a real thing, and they told me that I would soon forget him. I hoped that they were wrong but was afraid that they were right, and so I acted accordingly, trying (and continually failing) to put him out of my mind and move on with my life.

The other kind of dream always made me very happy. I haven't had one for about 5 years now, and it's looking increasingly unlikely that I ever will again. In this kind of dream, he and I find ourselves alone together in a deserted space. At first it was usually a college dining hall; later it became a corporate boardroom. In any case, amidst the empty tables and chairs, we simply sit and talk for hours, telling each other all the details of our lives since we last met. When I wake up, I can remember none of the details at all, but it gives me a good feeling that lasts all day. What happened 5 years ago is that I suddenly had the thought, which had never occurred to me before, that the dreams were really real, and that he and I needed each other so much that we were granted this ability to periodically commune together as long as we remembered no details in the morning. Of course, once I came to that realization the spell was broken and the dreams stopped.

The dream I had last night was a variation on the first one. I dreamt that I got a Christmas card from his mother that was a sort of booklet with reminiscences of their family's life. It was amazing to see that several of the old family pictures included me. She also gave me his address and several pictures of his family today. So I guess even in the alternate dream world, too much water has gone under the bridge to pretend that we could get back together, but at least I can pretend that we still matter to each other and everyone knows it.

So why all this now? I think the message is clear: letting a good thing slip away can change your life forever, and not for the better. I've already learned that once, and this time I shouldn't let my momentary pride and stubbornness get in the way of my long-term happiness.