Keithrm - Love And Heartbreak - Tumblr Blog

Lament

Before I let go of you, I thought I could find happiness. When I let go of you, I thought I would find happiness.

I was wrong.

2024/03/06

What does it mean when, behind all the vignettes my mind created last night, were the lyrics;

“There's a light

Over at the Frankenstein place

There's a light

Burning in the fireplace

There's a light, a light

In the darkness of everybody's life”

?

Unforeseen

The greatest hurt…

That I am no longer allowed to tell you, I love you.

2024/02/27

Some would say I should let it all go.  Let go of the love.  Forget the memories.  I’m only hurting myself by hanging on.

Then I realize, it is never wrong to love someone, even if they do not return it.

2024/02/23

Remembering

You gave me the photo albums,

Wanting to erase your memories.

Sometimes, I wish I could too.

But then I think,

It is better to remember love,

Than to forget.

2024/02/23

Tale of the Tat

I was recently asked if I have any tattoos…

Elizabeth and I had been together for about 18 years, and married for about 14, when I walked into the den and said, “I’m thinking about getting a tattoo.”

Her response was, “If you do, you’ll never again have sex with me.”

Do not judge her.  I had no tattoos when we met.  In her mind, I wasn’t “that” guy, and I am not that guy.  I was wrestling with a changing body in a changing world.  Andropause is only an excuse in some regards, but hormones are strange drivers.  Regardless, she had every right to dislike the idea of having to look at permanent scar where one had not been before, just as I had the right to consider willfully creating one.

Her response struck me.  After my first marriage, a burden had been lifted from me in one regard.  That marriage was aggressive and angry.  That ex was controlling and manipulative.  Freed from her, I had started to find myself again when I met Elizabeth.  She supported me and helped me in wonderful ways.

Unknowingly, her response to my thought of a tattoo brought up feelings from my previous marriage.  The feeling that I was no longer in control of my own being.  This only added to the wacky hormones and feelings of bewilderment and isolation I was experiencing.  I did not resent her response, but I did not know how to deal with it either.

At a following Christmas, she gave me a gift certificate to a local tattoo artist whom she had selected, expressing she realized it was wrong of her to control what I might do with my own body.

I appreciate her understanding, but now I was left with a new quandary.  The gift represented a new form of control.  I did not get to pick where I would have the tattoo done, or when, or who would do it.  There felt some restriction based on price, size and perhaps body location.  I had envisioned passing some martial arts test in my instructor’s city, and celebrating with a tattoo.  Now, I had a gift from a woman whom I love dearly, a woman who does not like tattoos, for a set amount within a given time-frame.  The feeling went from, “you can’t” to “you must”.  Again, I felt left out of the equation.

It took time.  Months passed while I internally debated the situation.  Do I or don’t I?  I am sure Elizabeth wondered through all that time when I would come home to show her the dreaded tattoo.  I finally expressed that I just couldn’t do it, because I would be doing it for the wrong reason.  I hated wasting her gift, but I just couldn’t use it.  Sadly, this all happened near the end of things.  It was swept up as part of it, though I feel it was not.  It may be an example perhaps, but not a part.

The world has changed since Elizabeth and I met.  Tattoos have moved from accepted to expected.  I was recently asked if I have any tattoos.  I do not, and I never will.  As an act of contrition, I will not get something that would upset her so, even though we are no longer together.  This is my choice, even though she will never know - an act of my love.

2024/02/22

Sun-Shower

Every day you sparkle into my thoughts like a sun-shower, bright beams of light with a sprinkle of rain.

Fortunately, my love for you is greater than the heartbreak of not being with you.

2024/02/21

Your soul vibrates like an exuberant child.

Your spirit feels like a crescendo with no resolution, a shepherd’s tone forever rising, lifting all within your influence.

2024/02/19

No Undo, No Do Overs

2024/02/18

Life is not like a software program, it also is not a game.  There is no Undo button, and Do Overs.

I have fought my way through andropause, the midlife crisis.  I am now on the downhill slope, the inevitability of mortality squarely in front of me.  They say you should not have any regrets.  I cannot help feeling that I do have one major regret, though I also know I do not.

On one hand, I regret leaving her.  I have returned to my former self.  Life is calmer.  I understand I need space to recharge my social batteries.  I now know what it would take to live with someone and keep peace with her, and myself.  I have not found a companion, perhaps because everyone is gauged against my ex, but mostly because my introversion makes meeting people extremely difficult.  The chance that another Elizabeth, full of cheer and exuberance, will plunk herself down beside me is very unlikely.  Lightening does strike more than once in the same place but only at the highest points, not in the lowest valleys.

I regret that I let go of that love.  I have learned what we had was indeed love, the way we all think it should be.  Feelings so deep they cling to you with an unshakeable static.

On the other hand, in a frightfully human and dissonant way, I also do not regret leaving her.  I left for the right reason.  I have calmed down, my hormones settled and my former self lives anew, but I am still not the right person for her.  I am still that cowboy in jeans who enjoys box lunches, and she is still that princess in flowing gowns who enjoys high tea.

Some would argue, ‘Learn new things.  Take a chance.  Go get you some.’  Though I must recognize, it has been many years.  While I have surfed the rough waters of my own self, she has also climbed her own mountain.  My love for her has not faded, but what of her love?  Though she has sent small kindnesses my way, she has every right to be bitter.  If not bitter, totally void.  Early on, she asked me to respect boundaries, which I have.  That is why Santa is a bit secret.  I have learned that many people survive breakups by executing clean cuts – no hatred, no malice; the other person simply becomes all but nonexistent.

It would be rude and inappropriate for me to ‘take a chance’, as I respect the boundaries, and I am still the wrong person for her.  But I will never let go of the love.

Memory Loss On Memory Lane

(2024/02/17)

When a relationship is broken, one of the many things we lose is mutual recall.

We all get nostalgic feelings from specific things, perhaps a place, a scent, or a song.  For many of us in my generation, TV theme songs can be a real kick down sentimental memory lane.

Lately, part of my late night routine involves the TV being turned on to Catchy TV, and the show “Newhart” – not the “The Bob Newhart Show”, where Bob Newhart plays a psychiatrist, but “Newhart”, where he plays the owner of a little inn, in Vermont.  For me, there is something very emotional about the theme.

The emotion connects directly with my ex, Elizabeth.  But here is the catch; “Newhart” ran from 1982 to 1990.  I did not meet Elizabeth until 1990.  As such, the bulk of the show ran during a previous – and most unsettling – marriage.  The nostalgic tug of the theme does not bring up any of the negative emotions or associations with the first marriage.  The feelings the theme brings up are tied to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and I were big fans of “Twin Peaks” when we first met.  I have a very strong emotional response to that theme song.  “Twin Peaks” premiered in 1990.  My memory of it and Elizabeth is crystal clear.  But my memory of Elizabeth and “Newhart” is non-existent.  I have only the emotional tug of the theme to give me a clue.  And when I look at the dates “Newhart” aired, she and I could have only watched the last season together, or perhaps reruns.  That said, I do have a vague recollection of us discussing the college drinking game, “Hello Bob”, where everyone is required to take a drink whenever someone says “Hello, Bob” during “The Bob Newhart Show”.  Likewise, there is a nebulous memory of discussing the fun characters Larry, Darryl and Darryl from “Newhart”, but these memories are so foggy, I could have had those debates with anyone.

Oh, how I wish we could have remained a friendship connection, to email each other or to be able to have a dinner every now and then.  I do send her a happy birthday email every year, and I give her a Christmas gift every year – secretly place by her door around midnight on each Christmas Eve, with the card signed, “ . . .  Santa”.  The three dots represent, “I Love You”.  She knows who “Santa” is, but she does not know what the dots mean.  Fourteen years now, Santa has left his gifts.  Fourteen years, and she has sent me a small gift of her own, sent via my daughter.

In 2023, for the first time in those fourteen years, I did get to see her and talk for a bit.  Her cheer and bubble was as effervescent as ever.  She looked happy, and healthy, and honestly, beautiful.  She had moved into a new house, and had an old family clock from my Dad that she no longer had a place for, and she wanted to return it to me.  I crumbled in the meeting.  I was not emotionally strong enough, but all this is a bit of a digression.

Would that I could ask her, “Did we watch ‘Newhart’ often?”  As a couple, you have more RAM and even more ROM – your hardwired memory is larger, and your randomly accessed recall is greater. When a relationship is broken, we lose so many things.  At times, like my first marriage, the breakup was the beginning of a new life.  I was reborn.  The breakup with Elizabeth has left me feeling old, feeble, and forgetful.

I Will Not Lose Her

(Written August 25, 2016, edited in 2024)

When a cataclysmic storm rages between friends, we often look at the relationship itself.  What went wrong?  That is what I did with her.  I examined the relationship.  I am sure she did as well.  However, I think a deeper part of me had a better, though unclear, understanding.

It was not the relationship.  It was me.  I was changing.  I had changed.  I had begun to yell.  I hate yelling and confrontation.  I had become rude and aggressive.  I made her uncomfortable, and made her feel embarrassed around her friends.  I would commiserate over events for days.  I had become particular and fixed.  Meaningless things stuck in my craw.  That was not the me I had been before.

What happened to the person who bought her a flower every payday?  What happened to the person who played with her like a puppy, right in front of her family?  Where was the person who left little notes of affection?  Where was the young adult who sat and listened to music for hours?  What happened to the person who cherished the differences between peoples?  The person I always thought I was, the person I had been was gone, buried under spite and burden, and mostly confusion.

We often point our fingers at familiarity.  Routine steps in, and things get dull.  Certainly, this played a role, but simple commonness would not turn playfulness into argument.  Moreover, I had lost the ability to communicate with others, of greatest note my daughter.  Something else was at work, though I could not see the condition while being consumed by it.  I had changed.  I was changing.  The me I enjoyed had been lost, left behind like a forgotten piece of luggage.

I did not know it at the time, but andropause was eating away at the younger me.  The symptoms, as I read them, did not apply, but every physiology is different.  Moreover, severe Social Anxiety was also setting in, almost to the point of phobia.  I have always been introverted, socially anxious, and awkward, but I was sinking into a much deeper abyss.  Did changing hormones fuel the anxiety, or did the anxiety alter the andropause symptoms?  Who knows?  I can only see it now because it is all done and past.

I did not leave her.  Oh, I started the separation, but it was not her I was fleeing.  I was not abandoning the relationship.  I dragged myself away from her like a dying animal sulking away from the group for the group’s protection.  I pulled the yelling, particular, touchy lunatic I had become to a safe distance.  During a mid-life crisis, most men think of fast cars and young women.  However, I sought solitude.  I hated hurting her.  I detest myself for doing so.  I needed to reclaim the original me and kill the monster I had become.  I needed to punish myself and protect the world from my beast.

The love and affection has not faded.  It has always been there, though it had to be concealed.  I needed to find music again.  I needed to learn to communicate again.  I needed to understand parts of me I had never known, and rekindle parts that had been long gone.  I have learned I am emotionally broken and immature in so many ways.  I cannot reconcile love and sex.  Introversion and Social Anxiety have always been parts of me.  I am a dweeb, a dork, unable to be adult about the emotional and social qualities of life.  I can write a book, talk sciences, teach a class, and solve problems with the best of them, but I cannot properly handle human interactions.  The human equations, the personal qualities, are knots I cannot untie.  Autism, Asperger’s, perhaps there is a sprinkle of these in my matrix.  Looking in someone’s eyes is more frightening than revealing.

I miss her.  I always will.  I dream about her more than any other person or thing.  I wake up crying several times a year, and I do not see that changing.  My hormones have settled.  I have crossed the mid-life crisis, and understand myself.  I listen to music again, and play.  I let things go.  The tensions are gone.  Life’s difficult challenges are faced straightforward.  The love is there and always will be.  I will die with her name on my lips.

I have lost her presence, though I will not lose her.

You Still Reach Into My Dreams

(Written 2014/06/04, not previously posted, edited 2024)

To: Elizabeth

You are the only one . . .

My dream, filled with strange imagery, shifts into a home.  The house is a muted combination of the two places where we had lived.  Like so many dreams about you, there is a hint of Christmas.  We are in this house out of some odd occurrence.  Our real lives are still true, both of us independent.  As always, your warmth and cheer reach out, letting me know this momentary encounter is not an inconvenience.  We are figuring out where I can temporarily store my things, when we enter into conversation…

You are the right person for me.  Our years were perhaps my most joyous.  Alone in my hermit hole I have learned a lot about myself.  I was not the right person for you, and I lament any pains I cause.

People frighten me.  In my desire to please and keep the peace, I push down, push away, and hide bits of myself, little by little.  I lose myself.  There is a person in me who wants to sing out, but holds it in for fear of upsetting or unsettling or changing the perspective of others about me.  I need time alone, not to be merely in another room, but to be truly alone.  I need that time every day.  I need time to bang on the piano mindlessly, like a little child who enjoys the cacophony, with no fear of ridicule or rejection, not that you would, but the fear that anyone would is an every present pressure.  I cannot stay with anyone for more then a few hours, and then I must run to my hole of solitude, where I can expand.

I think of how we met.  We were at our mutual friend’s party.  And where was I?  There I sat, alone in the den.  Party goers came and went through the kitchen with fleeting greetings.  But then you came in.  You came in, and your warmth filled the room.  You more than spoke, you came over to me, and sat beside me, and beamed your cheer right at me.

You, and only you, full with your warmth and bubble, were able to reach down into the abyss of my solitude and pull me up, and out.

The dream brakes and restarts, a Christmas tree in the mingled composite of our dwellings.  Then suddenly I am old and feeble, and small.  As if a Benjamin Button, I had shriveled into a tiny old man in a hospital bed.  Alex comes in and says there is a visitor.  It is you, age making you more angelic, rather than the raisin it had turned me into.  All I can do is weep.  You are the right person for me, providing the most joyous human connection I ever had.  It is so sad that I was not the right person for you.

I Wonder

(2024/02/14)

We did not fight or argue,

Though we drifted apart.

It has been years,

And on this Valentine’s Day,

And every day,

I wonder why.

What About the Blind Girl?

(Written 12/10/2013, not previously posted, edited 2024 and posted on Tumblr)

The dream started like most dreams do, wispy and vague. There is a gathering of a few people I know, though I cannot identify them. They present me with a horse, of sorts. The horse slowly morphs into a large dog, which we all take for a walk.

As we walk, I become more aware of the group, though I cannot see a face.  I feel comfortable with them.  These are more than merely friends or acquaintances, they are close companions, one of them extremely close, and yet shrouded in a dreamy veil.

I am told, in a rather soft and indirect manner, there is a new person in the group whom they all want me to meet.  The young lady is blind.  She is quite chipper.  The group and I, along with the blind girl, lead the dog with a long red leash as we walk along a low grassy hill in a populated area that feels oddly familiar.

The grassy open area morphs into the interior of a house I have never seen before.  I could not really see it in the dream.  I was aware of walls and rooms, but cannot describe the layout or color, other than to note there are several sets of stairs that have no banisters or railings.  The blind girl walks around the house with ease.

I ask her, “Are you counting?”  Indicating her ability to know where she is by the steps she takes.  She replies, “Yes.”  I am amazed at her ability to walk and talk, and yet keep count.  Suddenly we are all in an upper room.  The blind girl descends set of stairs that has no banister and no wall.  She loses her footing, and falls from sight.  There is a collective gasp.

I lunge toward the edge where she had fallen, and then quickly dash down the stairs, but the blind girl is gone.  There is no sense of urgency.  Instead, there is a feeling that everything is all right. Suddenly a table appears with my ex’s father sitting at it.  He calls his two grown sons to the table for a game of cards, and invites me to play with them.  His demeanor is firm, but not grim.  That was his way.

I place a coaster on the table, and he moves it.  He then notes the table itself, giving it a firm rap with his knuckles.  The bleached wood makes a solid knock sound.  “This is a strong table.  Good wood,” he says.  He grabs the corner and twists it using superman like strength, causing the corner to splinter but not break or detach.

With a spirit like movement, he floats toward me, getting close for a whispered conversation.  “I had a thing for one of my secretaries once,” he says.  I look at him shocked.  He questions me, “But if the house is burning?”

I reply, “Well, I would be the last out.  Everyone else goes first.  That’s my job.”

“Exactly,” he states, with a sense of pleasure in my reply.

While this conversation takes place, there is a sense the hosts within the house are in chit chat conversation.  Some are wondering about the blind girl, while others are talking about ‘her.’  The woman they indicate is my ex, the daughter of the overbearing figure who is questioning me.  I could feel my heart flutter and nervousness rise.

The father turns back toward the card table, and I turn around looking deeper into the house.  I see that I am in a well-adorned living room.  I wonder where the blind girl has gone.  Then I see a young lady whom I seem to know, in a dreamlike fashion.  I recognize her as a dear friend of my ex.  She is a tiny little thing of a woman, putting on her coat and preparing to leave.

She comes over to me and gives me a good-bye hug.  The hug is friendly, with an understanding.  I begin to choke up.  She and I slowly spin a quarter turn, and then the friend releases her grip. There in front of me is my ex.  She did not look anything like she really looks, except in the face.

She has a classic hourglass figure, and wears a gown of day-glow orange.  Despite the seemingly garish color, the gown is fashioned like Cinderella’s dress, and in the foggy muted nature of the dream, creates a glowing princess visage.  She comes to me, wrapping her arms around me.  I hug her, and we hold each other close.  She does not feel like her real self, the shape is all wrong, but it is she.  Her emotion, her personality, her warmth comes through loud and clear.

Like a figurine atop a music box, we began to turn in a slow, floating spin.  The emotions well up in me.  I fight hard to contain a wail.  My eyes water as I soak up the warmth of the embrace.  For a moment, from a third person perspective, I can see my ex turn her head and look at me, though I do not look at her.  She is smiling.  Knowing her happiness adds to the depth of my feeling.  It takes more effort to contain a weep of despair.

I concentrate on my breathing to hold back the emotional onslaught. In and out, breath after breath.

Dream becomes half dream, which becomes waking consciousness. I became aware of my actual, real life breathing.  The breathing of the dream in time with my real, deep, deliberate breaths.  Emotions crawl over me like a pet cat seeking rest.

I fight back tears.

It All Went Wrong

Originally Written May 11, 2013, edited in 2024, never posted (until now 02/13/2024)

In a dream, I walk into the gym to begin teaching.  The room is not as it really is, but is a dream-spun training room.  The floor banks from the entrance down to the far right corner.  The students are scattered about.  I have difficulty getting them to pair up and get ready for training.

Several older grapplers are near the entrance of the room, playing with the timer, until they finally make it malfunction completely.  One of them had tried to set it to do 100 minute rounds.  I try to explain that the clock doesn’t allow it, besides, who would want to work multiple rounds longer than an hour and a half?  As we all gather around the timer in an attempt to fix it, one of the larger grapplers puts me in a poor headlock, eventually tying up his own hand within his gi so that he cannot release me, while he also cannot set the lock.  Though not threatened, I cannot get free, nor could the grappler free himself from his own grip.  Eventually I slip out of his trap, and continue to try and instruct the unruly class.

A student, with his girlfriend partner, uses the focus mitts improperly, holding them as well as striking them.  In effect, he feeds himself for his own kicks, which he executes toward his partner – a very dreamlike distortion that is physically impossible but seems normal within the dream.  I chastise him, pointing out that the feeder does not strike, the striker does not feed.  I then proceed to show the class the next combination to work.

I select a student with whom I am familiar.  I have her use the larger Thai pads and feed for me as I demonstrate a kick sequence.  As I began to throw my kick, she backs up, slipping magically through the wall, forcing me to stop mid kick.  With the partner gone, there is no way to demonstrate the sequence.  The class, which seems to be about five groups of two or three people each, becomes even more unruly.

In frustration, and feeling class time is nearly done, I begin to exit the classroom.  I pass by several folding chairs near the entry way, chairs that had not been there earlier.  As I pass the chairs, which at first appeared empty, I realize they do have people in them, and one of them is upset I had not noticed her, though I really had not noticed the people there at all.  I decide I need to return to the room and formally close the class and apologize for having not provided a good training period.

As I turn around to reenter the room and address the class, there she is in one of the chairs.  She turns to look at me, and I lose all words.  I stammer, trying to apologize to the few students for the clumsy nature of the class, but I cannot focus or form words completely as I became more and more aware that she is right there looking at me.

I turn to leave and she gets up.  We both met up in the entry hallway.  She has with her a small child, six or eight years old, who is proud to announce that he had just gotten his middle name.  I have the sense the child is a nephew of some kind.  As the three of us walk out to a main room, I congratulate the boy on his new name, and then he turns and simply evaporates.  It is only then I get a full and clear look at her.

She looks as she did decades ago when we first met.  Her hair a bit longer then it had been in our last years.  She is wearing a very familiar heavy blue sweater, black open weave shawl, black shin length skirt, black transparent hose, and black shoes with two inch heels.  A very common outfit for her, one I have seen her in many times.  The sight of her and that outfit creates a sense of continuity, of past, of familiarity.

She moves to a well-padded sofa that does not have arms.  She sits down on it, and says, “I think I have a Valentine somewhere.”  She has several small gift wrapped packages, each in a metallic paper, one yellow, one blue, one green, one red, and so on.  She begins carefully opening a bit of the wrapping to look inside, searching for a suitable Valentine offering from her store of emergency gifts.

I beg her, “Please don’t.  Don’t.”  I cross in front of the sofa and sit beside her.  As I sit down, she turns and sort of curls up, her head against the back of the sofa, facing downward, as she brings her knees up on the seat.  I sit against one of her knees, my back lightly resting beside her head.  I keep repeating, “Don’t.  Please don’t.”

In my dream, I fight back tears.  I feel a bawl growing in me.  My dream moves from dream to half-dream.  I am neither awake nor asleep.  In my real self, I can feel the tightening of my chest.  My throat is clamped in the grip of holding back a cry, my breathing small gulping inhales as I avoid exhaling, knowing that a long expire will result in an uncontrollable burst.  My eyes feel heavy, full, warm, and wet, my closed lids holding back what would be a torrent of tears.

As I rise from dream toward waking, I realize I am physically experiencing the feelings in my dream, and holding back its sorrow.  Moments of effort remove the rhythmic pumping of my breath, and allow the tears to dry, and the hammer in my chest to cease.  I wake.

It all went wrong.

“I want to love and be loved more than anything else in the world.”

— Marilyn Monroe

“It hurts every day, the absence of someone who was once there.”

— Marie Lu, Champion

Lonely Because

(2024/02/12)

I am not lonely because I was not loved,

But because I was loved.

I am not lonely because I never loved,

But because I love,

And I threw it all away.

“There’s that one person you’ll never get over no matter how long it’s been.”

— Avinash Wandre

The Hole Where the Rain Comes In

Originally Written and Posted on 02/22/2013, (edited in 2024)

In the early hours of the day, I floated into a morning dream.  I was in a house.  The house was ours, though separately.  That is to say, we shared it, lived in it, and owned it, but each to our own share.  I was inside and I heard her car pulling up.  I leaned out of the window and applauded, happy for her to be home, happy to see her smiling face through the windshield.  It was she, but with a more tanned and modern look.

She came inside and began complaining, quaintly, about her current assignment.  “Do you know where they sent me?  To Virginia.”  “Virginia?” I queried.  She confirmed her statement and we began talking about why they would send her so far away.  Government cutbacks, reductions and furloughs caused court administration to farm things out to distant states.  I worried about how the current state of government could affect her and hoped it would not.

As we talked, we noticed the sound of water inside the house.  We went to the living room to find that it was literally raining in a section of the room near an outside wall.  A large section of the ceiling was perforated and water was coming in as if it was rain itself.  I said, “I should have checked the attic before we bought the place. I’ll take care of it.”

As I crossed the living room, another spongy area opened up in the ceiling and I walked right through a steady trickle of rain.  I headed up into the attic.  Once there, I could see where pieces of paper towel had been stapled to the underside of the roof, as if a paper towel would soak up all the water.  The paper towel, like tiny squares of toilet paper on a poorly shaven chin, clearly marked where every little hole was.  I affixed a sheet of plastic over the holes, keeping the rain out until some day when I could repair the roof itself, which I hoped was within my abilities to do.

I returned downstairs.  In that dreamlike way, she looked completely different and yet was still herself, her spirit shining through another body.  She was younger, but not young.  She had an air of youthful vitality within her mastered years.  Her hair was beyond blonde, almost white, but not the white of age.  It was the bright blonde of playfulness.  She was thinner, but not merely smaller.  She possessed the shape of activity.  She was clothed in a flirtatious way, but not skimpy and revealing.  Her dress was fun and outgoing.  She was dancing wildly with a coat-rack, almost like a 1920’s flapper as she kicked up her heels and swayed her body.

I stuttered softly, “You know I – I l-love you.”  She turned her back to me in the midst of her flamboyant dance with the coat-rack, and said in an unclear single breath, “I do don’t do that.”  I turned from her to head into another room, saying, “I know,” expressing understanding, yet I did not understand.

I woke.  The dream was clear in my mind.  I could feel my love for her is forever and unchanging.  I was aware I could never give her what she deserved.  I could not understand what she said and meant, “I do don’t do that.”  Did she know I love her, but didn’t want me to say it to her, or did she not want me to love her?  I was detached with no understanding.  All I knew was that I could not fix the hole where the rain comes in.

I Can't. I Know.

Originally Written and Posted on 1/12/2013, edited in 2024

Last night, as I fell through consciousness and floated toward dreamland, I found myself in a community.  The collection of homes and small buildings quickly morphed into a single, large communal dwelling.  I was in one of two primary living rooms within that dwelling.  There was a nameless, tall, thin, Nubian woman in the room with me.  She approached me seductively, leaning in for a kiss. As she did, several other people entered the room.  I gently backed away, saying, “I can’t.”

Then my eye caught a man.  He was also tall and thin, his skin a smooth mocha color, his hair short.  I was fascinated with his eyes. He was one of those African Americans with light color eyes that are always stunning.  I asked him what color his eyes were.  I could not tell if they were blue, grey, or green.  He said, “They’re blue.”  Slowly, like a fine film camera move, my vision floated in toward one of his eyes.  My view grew closer and close until all I could see was the iris itself.  It was beyond blue, a sort of soft pastel rainbow that shifted and flowed.  I was fascinated by it and asked, “How do you get that color?”  He replied softly, “Rainbow drops.”  Suddenly, but not in a shocking way, I realized he was preparing to kiss me.  At that moment, I heard some crying and bawling behind me.  I backed away and said, “I can’t.”

I turned to see what was going on.  Laying on a sofa was my last ex, Elizabeth.  Sitting beside her was a woman whom I recognized as a friend of hers, but I do not know the woman in real life, the knowledge of friendship tied strictly to the dream.  The friend had a large pillow over Elizabeth’s face and upper body, almost completely concealing her, but not smothering.  Only the maker of dreams knows how I knew it was Elizabeth.  She was crying and beating her hands against the sofa in a childlike temper tantrum.  The friend was using the pillow to keep her contained as she tried to soothe Elizabeth with calming words.  I got up and went over to Elizabeth, the pillow still covering her face and upper body.  I gently took her hand and she quieted down almost immediately, like a child who had just gotten a boo-boo kissed.

The dream swerved and I was in my private space in the distant back of the massive communal dwelling.  It was time for sleep, and within my dream, I dreamt.  In my dream within a dream, I wondered why I could not kiss the man.  I realized that, while I enjoy a close connection with males, a connection that I do not have, I am not gay, and I do not want that form of connection.  Then within my dream’s dream, I wondered why I could not kiss the woman.  My inner dream revealed to me that I couldn’t share physical contact without certain feelings and words.  My dreamed dream mulled over the idea that I can carry out the acts, but I cannot perform.  I cannot enjoy without the words and feelings.  I can’t.

As my dreamer’s dream focused on these questions, my dream dreaming self was awoken by a loud commotion.  In the top-layer dream, I sprang up and began running from my place of exile in the far back corners, out through the hallways, maneuvering toward the main areas of the large communal maze.  Bouncing off walls in a frantic dash, I fought my way into one of the living areas.  In the adjoining living room – more of a foyer – was Elizabeth.  She put down some luggage and began to cross the floor, entering the living room I was in.  I sat on the sofa, shaken and concerned, asking, “Are you all right?”  She said, “Yes.” I wailed, “Oh thank god,” and I began to weep.  My tears were a mixture of joy in her safety, and sadness at my loss.

She was suddenly in front of me, sitting on the floor.  As my tears flowed, I held her hand, kissing and caressing her fingers.  She has a small mole at the base of her left thumb, and while some see such a thing as a distortion, to me it is a sign of her uniqueness, and I kissed it gently.  She kept saying softly, almost weeping herself, “I am sorry. I can’t.”  I said sadly, “I know.”

My real life self was startled awake.  So deep and intense was the dream, I did not perceive the nearby train as it ran past, it feeling more like the opening roar of the apocalypse.  When my living mind finally recognized the normal event, I became aware of the dream and refreshed it in my mind, wanting to hold onto it, making a mental point that I must jot down notes when the intended beginning of my day arrived.  In that mental refreshing, I drifted off again.

I was outside.  The day was cloud covered and dreary.  Everything was lit well enough to see, but there were no shadows, that sagging grey feeling was all around me.  I recognized the area as a part of the university campus that I often traveled through years ago, but that recognition was twisted and dream woven.  It was both outside and inside, open, but not fully.  It was the campus, but also a commonly visited movie theater.  It was today, but it was another day, and yet another day.  It was all these things at once.

Elizabeth and I passed by each other, walking in opposite directions. Time and time again we passed.  My feelings were heavy and deep with sadness.  I fought back tears.  With each passing, one of us would say, “I can’t,” and the other would respond, “I know.”  Each taking turn with the negative greeting, and the other taking turn with the acknowledgment.

Then we both entered a movie theater, but it was not like any theater I have seen, as there was no screen.  We both looked for a seat not knowing the other was doing the same.  We took seats only to realize we were sitting near each other.  Elizabeth looked at me, and with great sadness said, “I can’t.”  I replied equally sadly, “I know.”

Her friend from the dream within a dream appeared, and Elizabeth’s sorrow turned to joy as the two clasp hands.  I felt her joy and was happy for her.  Again, Elizabeth said to me, though this time with a touch of comfort, “I can’t.”  I smiled at her and said with understanding, “I know.”  The three of us left the theater and entered an area that resembled the corridor of a large mall.  The friend, who I knew only in the dream itself, began to lead us all to a secluded spot. There was an unspoken understanding that the three of us would unite in a blood-brother style ceremony, with Elizabeth at the center. I woke.  The dreams connected together, their feelings and focus so crisp and sharp they seemed more like reality.

I Am Alone

Originally Written and Posted July 10, 2012, edited in 2024

I am alone.

The dream was like most dreams.  Something observed.  Something I was a part of, yet detached from.  It began as an odd, nonsensical musing about the American Indians battling their oppressors.  The scene quickly shifted to strange, almost Dickens-like imagery, an odd series of narrow water locks, more like flumes, and youngsters fooling their betters out of cups of cream with feats of magic and escape-style trickery.  Large whale-like creatures rocked the small boats that worked through the locks, each whale larger than the one before, as if Escher himself had a hand in the maze like twists and turns of the locks, and the creation of the whales.

Suddenly we were in a home.  I say, ‘we’, while I was clearly all by myself, I could feel her.  I was more than just me – I was a part of a ‘we’.  She was in another room, getting ready for something.  This home was not like any place I have ever been, and yet it felt familiar. Upscale, with all the flourishes that bring her comfort.  She was bustling about, filling the air with her bounce, as she always did.  I was in a vulnerable, prone spot in some back corner of some back room.

She appeared in the open door of the room where I lay, and said, “Well, I’m on my way. Won’t be back tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  She had that slight English lilt that she adds when she uses her favorite British phrases.  But, “we’ll be off,” did not mean we were going for some ride.  As casually as she said it, the phrase was devastatingly final.  Panic ran through me.

I chased after her as she stepped out of the front door.  “What?” I yelled, but she did not hear or did not respond at first.  Outside, the yard is covered with the flotsam of a moving day.  Neighbors and passersby are picking at the debris like crows on a carcass, yet the sun was shining and the air was damp with morning dew.  I made it to the porch where I felt the need to cower behind a pillar, in retreat from the busybody collectors.  She cheerily flipped her shawl over her shoulder and helped a Mr. Butler to negotiate the purchase of a garden hose by one of the neighbors.

Then she turned, looked at me and responded to my earlier cry.  “Oh, didn’t you know?  I won’t be coming home tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  I understood it from our reality.  She would be working out of town, and appended to that was, “we’ll be off.”  Not “off” as in leaving for a trip, but “off” as in the turning out of a light.  I felt the sorrow swell up in me.  I could feel the corners of my mouth curl down, like a child about to bawl.  I clung to the bit of column I crouched behind, hiding from the crows.  I peeked out to catch a fading glimpse of her as she gave Mr. Butler a final word and began to head to her car.  “I’m sorry,” I cried, the tears swelling up as I cowered and clung to the pedestal, avoiding the gaze of the neighbors.  I watched her as she drove away.

I woke, the sorrow thick.  I am alone.

It Happened Again

Originally Written and Posted June 28, 2012, edited in 2024

It happened again.

Time heals all wounds, they say . . .

I have grown more comfortable in my own skin then I have felt for a very long time.  With comfort comes a certain beige banality. Hermitage has a homogeneity.  I would not say that it lacks stimulation, but the emotions are soft.  The highs aren’t so high, the lows not so low, and there are very few turns in the road.  It isn’t bad really.  It is serviceable, comfortable, and safe.  I rather like it that way, but it does come at a cost.  Yin and Yang eternally strapped to the seesaw.

It happened again.  Like most nights, when I laid down last night, I sent out my thoughts.  There is no god, but there is an energy and I send my thoughts out into it.  I wish Alex well, and Dad, and Kim.  I think of Mom.  And I think of Elizabeth.  I hope that she is well and all right, and happy. Like most nights, my mind worked, drifting from thought to thought, examining an issue here, and reflecting on a resolution there.  And then the blackness absorbed me.

Being a night-owl hops your life around the clock.  During the mid-morning hours, when most are starting to feel the weight of the day, I usually still lie prone.  Often this is when the dreams are deepest. This morning was no exception.  It started simply.  I was unpacking something, a tiny trinket – a small teapot and high-heeled shoe on a miniature platform, all porcelain and white and pure, and all no bigger than two thumbs.  It made me think.  “Had I missed something?”

I rushed into the middle room of my hermit’s hole, where I opened a file cabinet drawer.  I found an old yearbook, with signatures and pictures.  It was hers.  “Oh my, I will have to get this back to her.” Then a pair of fur edged gloves, and several floppy, fabric, flowered purses.  And then books – books upon books upon books, filling the drawer as if it were a gateway to a larger dimension.  “Oh my.”  I clutched a colorful clutch and held it to my cheek, and began to weep.  “I’m sorry.  I am so very sorry.”

Suddenly I woke with the sorrow heavy, the concern real. Were there really things I had accidentally spirited away?  No.  Then I remembered.  I know every nick and knack in my recluse’s realm; there are no beautiful bags or boxes of books that should not be here. It was a dream, full of deep emotions not felt during the steady pace of my waking life.

They say time heals all wounds.  But these are not wounds, and I will keep them safe.

She was the Right Person for Me

Originally written and posted April 10, 2012, edited in 2024

Years pass, and still I dream about her – dreams more real than most I have.  Dreams of being in her presence, just nearby, not too close. She allows me there, her kindness shining so bright.  But you cannot stare at the sun for long.  The vividness of the dreams are so strong. Music drifts through as I watch moments of simple pleasures.  A glance, a kind word; emotion packed into a Christmas ornament, the sweetness of her smile.  I try to tell her that I am okay, but that I still feel.  I feel.  In those moments, in my dreams, I have more feeling, more emotion than I have at any other time.  So often, I feel dead inside, dull and unmoved.  Yet in those moments, in those dreams, the feelings are so deep, I weep and find myself waking, physically moved.

As I wake, feelings both warm and sad sag around me like a heavy quilt, and I remember the counterweight that pulls down on my soul. I recall with fondness the tea cups and doilies, the potpourri and polish, and I think of “Frasier”.  Yes, “Frasier” the television show, and Martin, the father – a duct-taped Laz-Y-Boy versus an elegant Armani.  But that was just a show, and fathers and sons are so different.

She was the right person for me.

I understand London and Hamburg, and La Ville-Lumière.  And there she is again in my life, because I imagined the “Champs-Élysées”, but I would need her help to spell it right – I haven’t the skill to find it in a dictionary.  I pray that someday she will dine with the Queen, or a Prince, or the President, and she can savor all the flavors of the accouterments and circumstance.  For me, the proper fork is tricky. Dining straight from the box the meal came in is satisfying enough. You can hold the sun in your gaze for too long, and when you do, you blind yourself, and you diminish the sun’s brilliance and wonder.

I was a cowboy with a tea cup.  One will destroy the other.  Her beaming personality and light called me to her worlds.  But as I tried to don that suit, I felt itchy and fettered, and my saddle slipped away. My dirt dulled the brightness of her porcelain, and cracked the firmness of her reach, and it should never have been so. She deserves all the splendor and wonder she seeks.  I am content in jeans, and it seems I am unable, and unwilling, to elevate beyond them.

I wake, physically weeping from the dreams, feelings so deep from only a remembered smile.  Her real life warmth and bubble are so strong that she is still able to send me a kindness, even if just in make-believe.  She bettered me, and does to this day.  She was the right person for me. But I was not the right person for her.