Last night I had a dream. We were walking around this mall, side by side. I looked over and you smiled, and I stuck out my arm and you wrapped yourself around it. There we were, walking around, your head rested on me so romantically. It felt so heavy that I felt that my heart could give in at any moment. We walked along an endless corridor, amongst indistinguishable storefronts. I can recall feeling so proud, so happy, and then I woke up. And I felt horribly guilty.
We went through something tumultuous, and I ruined a long friendship by letting out my infatuation for you. It was unrequited. And so it goes, after an awkward silence we went about our daily lives. I tried to go through the motions of friendship all over again, but it felt so weird that we just... stopped. Stopped interacting, stopped talking, and finally stopped seeing each other. Except in this one dream.
These are what my dreams amount to whenever I dream about girls I knew. We hold hands, we peck each others lips, we hug each other tightly, we sleep on each others' shoulders. They're innocent to the point of being wholesome. In them, the days are always nice, the sun is always shining. They grin at me and I feel that my soul is going to implode because of all that... beauty. When the dream ends and I wake up, I stare at the ceiling, and smack myself upside the head for having another dumb dream.
It's not like they're not wet dreams. I definitely don't dream about us making sweaty love like rabbits. You're usually about as far away from a sex object as can be. But after them I always wake up feeling like I made a huge mistake, because I definitely can't look at you the same way during the rest of the day. We brush shoulders and that near-inaudible crack you heard was my voice attempting to convey a hello. When we make eye-contact I can feel my heart contract, and I can't think of a single thing to say, just because I feel awful that I dreamed about you. Where's the guilt from if it was just slight hugs, held hands, or innocuous kisses?
If there's one thing I know about me, it's this: I never dream about girls I think I have a chance with. At least my subconscious isn't messed up to do that, right? So the opposite must hold true, in that I dream about girls I know I've lost. They're the stars in my fantasy's landscape because they can never exist in reality. I'll find myself talking to girls I could never find the right words around. Or, I'll be hugging girls whom I couldn't do anything about simply because there are so many miles between us. Distance, incompatibility, reproachfulness... all of these things are conquered through dreams.
And it's because of this infallibility, this dauntlessness, that my stomach churns at the sight of you. Because I am imagining something that simply cannot be. I am defying the laws of nature, I am spitting in the face of God, by even conceiving this. Her decision was made because of so many factors rendering relationships impossible. And if you can't change the way she feels, then you can't keep continuing to feel that way about her.
Despite my acceptance of the reality of this world, it seems my subconscious refuses to believe in it. I acknowledge it, but no matter how many times I say outwardly "it's okay, it's okay," no matter how many times I can say that I'm happy just to be friends, there's a tinge of doubt resting on the penumbra of my waking mind. I can be walking right beside you and be as happy as a clam, but all of that can be shattered by one fantastic reverie. Every time I think I've worked it out, affirmed this rationalization in my waking mind, feelings of affection will sprout in my subconscious and destroy this notion of acquiescence to the way you feel. I find myself doubting myself. What was truth yesterday is conjecture today when you're betrayed by your own thoughts.
Looking through things that I've tried to write, I find the exact same sentiments expressed in my dreams have seeped into my pieces. My protagonists are saying the things I couldn't, doing the things I refused to, and expressing themselves to their loves in the ways I wished I could. They are melancholic things composed by loneliness, evoking feelings that shouldn't be, creating apparitions that will never be substantiated.
Seeing all of this the only conclusion that can be made is that I'm living in a dream world. Reality is blurred by the machinations of my sleeping thoughts. It's further distorted with every word I write. It's come to a point where I'm questioning every day as I know it. It's detrimental to my day to day, to my temporal life. I dwell on subjects I shouldn't, I keep feeling emotions that I need to discard somehow. If I keep it in my mind it's only going to make me worse off, but when I try to cast it away and forget about it completely, my mind won't let me.
But maybe it's better that way. We need to take heed to the voice of our hearts, we need to listen to our souls. The reason that my mind keeps bringing up memories of her like so much dirty laundry is because I never confronted those feelings, but only complied by them. I submitted myself to feeling a certain way simply because I wanted things to be normal, before I professed whatever affections I had and failed to have reciprocated. I need to work out my feelings instead of stuffing them down into an abyss only my sleeping hands can reach.
Looking at this I can say that when I write it's not to act out some masturbatory, self-satisfying fantasy but as a means to sort out my mental baggage. Because when I look back at things I had written before I cringe. I'm embarrassed to see myself acting a certain way for someone that I know now I had no reason to be that way around. I would read about a me ingratiating himself to anyone nice to him, or see him infatuated with someone who he barely talks to anymore. He's living in the supernatural, a world that cannot exist, saying hello to ghosts on a daily basis. I'm confronting myself, and trying to write away my dreams so I can live unhindered in reality. So that instead of saying "hello ghosts," I can say "hello friends" instead, and things can go back to being the way they were before.
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