Dreams.
It’s been over two weeks since the last night I slept with M.
It does begin to seem like it must have been a dream, because the world changed so abruptly, like waking up. It saddens me that it doesn’t feel like a good dream but a confusing, disturbing dream, incompletely recalled. All those sweet hours and days, the little things we enjoyed together, the trip to Mexico, look almost sinister in retrospect because I question my perception of it, I wonder if I was badly mistaken about what was happening then in light of how he ended it. In my heart of hearts I want to believe that he loved me, that he wanted to share his life with me, that what we were doing together was reciprocal, mutual -- it felt that way at the time -- but … I don’t feel certain now. That, more than anything, breaks my heart – not that it ended, but that I’m not even sure what it was anymore.
I think the reason I feel so calm and assured when I’m writing here, the reason I take comfort in this, is that I like who I am when I’m writing. I like this me. I spend way too much time not liking myself. Changing that is a lifelong project, but I make progress. This experience has been self-mortifying in a way that’s good in the long run, I guess. I’ve had a chance to take a hard look at myself in daylight. Possibly some day I will have benefited from this experience, even if I’m panhandling on the feeder road. Maybe I’m inured, vaccinated.
Packing, farewell parties, teary goodbyes in my dream this morning, and all of it happening in a movie theater while movies were playing. Not surprising. What’s odd is that the only person I remember in the dream is my friend Monica, who lives in New York.
It does begin to seem like it must have been a dream, because the world changed so abruptly, like waking up. It saddens me that it doesn’t feel like a good dream but a confusing, disturbing dream, incompletely recalled. All those sweet hours and days, the little things we enjoyed together, the trip to Mexico, look almost sinister in retrospect because I question my perception of it, I wonder if I was badly mistaken about what was happening then in light of how he ended it. In my heart of hearts I want to believe that he loved me, that he wanted to share his life with me, that what we were doing together was reciprocal, mutual -- it felt that way at the time -- but … I don’t feel certain now. That, more than anything, breaks my heart – not that it ended, but that I’m not even sure what it was anymore.
*
I think the reason I feel so calm and assured when I’m writing here, the reason I take comfort in this, is that I like who I am when I’m writing. I like this me. I spend way too much time not liking myself. Changing that is a lifelong project, but I make progress. This experience has been self-mortifying in a way that’s good in the long run, I guess. I’ve had a chance to take a hard look at myself in daylight. Possibly some day I will have benefited from this experience, even if I’m panhandling on the feeder road. Maybe I’m inured, vaccinated.
*
Packing, farewell parties, teary goodbyes in my dream this morning, and all of it happening in a movie theater while movies were playing. Not surprising. What’s odd is that the only person I remember in the dream is my friend Monica, who lives in New York.