Dreaming

Dreaming…is it always this way? Is it this way for other people or am I being punished by the sultans of slumber, whoever they are? I don’t know but I do know that my dreams are so vivid and real that I have a very difficult time emerging from their effect on me even after I awake.

My dream last night I did bring upon myself, I guess. I am working on a compilation of memories I have about people I have encountered in my life. Some were brief while others have remained steadfast over the years. I am including relatives, though I have few in comparison to the rest of the world and I am also “remembering” mere acquaintances and people who have remained in my thoughts. There is no real rhyme or reason to it, although I am trying to go chronologically. I’m nutty like that. I have also decided to use only initials because no one signed up for this. Some initials will be obvious while others will be more obscure, say from a nickname in order to protect the innocent…or not so innocent.

So, as I remember these people and how they affected or changed my life, I, of course, am recalling some not so great memories. Thus the dreams have been rampant of late, but last night, oh, last night’s was a doozy.

I will set the stage with fact and then move into the dream…

Back in my hometown, where I had lived with my parents before their passing, there was a young man whom I absolutely loved. He was my first crush and when I say I loved him, I mean that. As much as a little girl can “love” like that, I loved him. He was so much older than I was, around 16, and he was tall, played trumpet, and wasn’t skinny but wasn’t overweight, either. He had a great build. I remember wishing he would hug me, and he did quite often. He knew I had a crush on him and he was nice enough of a boy to be kind to my heart. I was in love with this boy from my 7th birthday on. He set the standard on what I was looking for in a guy and nobody ever really came close to the person I had conjured him being in my mind. That’s how it is when you are a little girl with your first crush…the bar is set between that boy and your Daddy…

I loved this guy even though I moved away from him when I was 10. I saw him occasionally as we would come back to our hometown to visit from time to time. Every time I saw him, he was even more handsome than I had remembered and I loved him more deeply. He merged into adulthood with great ease and his flirtation skills were honed to finesse as I met up with him in as I had turned 20. He was now in his early thirties and he was married with two children. His wife was a nurse and worked at night. He stumbled upon me at my place of employment and we hugged and were just so happy to see each other. Truth be told, I was beyond thrilled to see him and he was probably just being polite. Regardless of his real emotion in seeing me, if any, he did give me his phone number and address and told me to stop by that Friday night so we could “catch up”.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit to saying I wanted to go. I did want to go and catch up with him! The wife and kids didn’t really matter to me because I just wanted to “beeeeeee” with him…plus I love kids. Anyway, I tried to look as attractive as I possibly could because I wanted him to think I was “pretty” and I headed on over to his house, arriving exactly when he told me to.

He had instructed me not to ring the bell as the kids were asleep, which shows you how much I knew about little kids and bedtimes and 9pm at that point in my life. So, there he was, waiting at the door for me and even that small gesture made me feel special, as if he were waiting for me…never occurring to me that he just didn’t want the kids to wake up. I was as pretty as I could make myself and I had even worn heels because he would always be taller than me at his 6 foot five inches. Being 5’11”, I love wearing heels even though you might think I wouldn’t…they make me feel, oh, what’s the word? Ah, yes… “sexy”.

He invited me into his home and closed the door behind me. He placed his hands on my shoulders while looking into my eyes and said, “I just can’t believe it. You are just so grown up and gorgeous. Let me look at you…” He looked me up and down and then gave me this huge bear hug that felt so amazing I honestly didn’t want it to end. He invited me over to the couch and we sat down. He was relaxed and polite, offering me something to drink, to which I declined. He asked all the right questions about college, my career, my plans, everything. So very attentive. Eventually I asked where his wife was and he explained that she was at work, and the mood changed.

She was supposed to be there. The kids were asleep and she was supposed to be there! In a swift second, I was caught up in a flurry of mixed emotions. I was scared, nervous, excited, flattered, petrified, insulted, and found it incredibly difficult to breathe. I have this unique dead giveaway when I am upset…my voice goes up about two octaves and I can communicate on a sonar level with bats.

My voice shot up. “Oh! She isn’t here, then? Oh. Well, uh, maybe I should, um, I thought you said she would, of course, if she was called in, um, uh, well, I probably should, um, go.”

He calmed me right down. It was absolutely fine if I stayed. The kids were asleep and we had so much catching up to do! His wife wouldn’t care one bit in fact, he had told her I was coming over… And in my wealth of knowledge at barely twenty years old, I believed him and stayed.

We talked. We laughed. We reminisced. He kept moving closer to me and would touch my knee when I said something funny or heartfelt. At twenty, I didn’t say too many things that were either, but he was just so polite and in tune with my needs and emotions, I guess. As you may recall, HE had set the bar for all my other relationships. HE was the one to whom everyone else was compared. HE was the epitome of perfection to me.

I am unsure if time flew by or if it stood still as we sat there in his living room, him edging closer to me…me trying to run the gauntlet of emotions and figure out what was going on. Convincing myself his intentions were innocent and I should be ashamed for assuming the worst, even if just for a fleeting moment. He had a wife and children, for goodness sake! I was surely just trying to boost my own ego by thinking he thought otherwise than sitting with an old friend. I had just wanted him to love me back for so long…

He stood up and went to the foot of the staircase. I was thinking he heard one of the children stir, but no. He asked me to come over there, too… He wanted to show me some pictures he had taken that he thought I would find interesting. I got up and met him at the stairs. The pictures were of the house where he grew up and of his younger brother and such. His younger brother was actually the first boy I ever allowed to kiss me. He was my age and we were in elementary school together from kindergarten until I moved away in 6th grade. My goodness how the younger brother had matured into the spitting image of his older brother!

By now, he had placed his arm around me as we both looked at the pictures on the wall. He was narrating the events of his life from that old house and how his older brother had passed away a few years earlier. His hand rested firmly in the small of my back and I lost track of his every other word as I concentrated on his hand being there. Again, the maelstrom of confusion in my head, my heart, my entire body!

I could feel the blood rushing to my face. I began to shake from nervousness and panic. I knew that whatever his intentions were, mine were too confused for me to be there. I was a good girl! I had morals and values and my family would be so ashamed if they knew I was even there! I had to get out of there and now!

I whirled around and muttered something about “having to leave” and he stopped me. He took me by the arm and asked me to relax. He said that everything was okay and that if I would just come and sit back down, we would talk and that there was no reason to leave.

Ah, the power of persuasion some people have over me…

He escorted me to the sofa and we sat. He was careful not to sit as closely as he had managed to before and he offered me a sip of water. The conversation went back to growing up and how “precious” I was back then…but my, how I had grown into an incredible, young woman.

He asked me to take off my heels because he thought that might help me relax because it was obvious to him that I was nervous.

“Do you normally sit on one leg?”

“Yes, yes, I do…all the time.”

“It’s sexy the way you do it. I mean, your legs are just so long…they just keep going and going. Literally you have legs up to here”, he said, motioning to his chest.

He leaned in and tried to kiss me. I pushed him away and tried to gather up my shoes to leave. He kept stopping me, begging me to listen, to just stay and listen. He said he was sorry and to please just give him a chance. He was caught in the moment and he promised he would behave. Please, please…just stay with me, he said…

Now, at this point, many of you will think I left while others will believe I stayed.

This is where my dream from last night begins…

Unaware of the time, I headed back to my apartment. I needed to think. I wanted to be alone. I had so much to process from the absolute thrill of him wanting me to the pandemonium of confusion and angst to the regret of it all. All of a sudden I was the poster child for naïveté? What happened to that college girl who knew so much and was so sophisticated?

My dream then fast-forwards to today when “he” reads my blog-turned-into-book because I have become a published and world-renowned writer. He reads today’s entry and says to me…

“I had no idea.”

I, of course, believe him to be referring to having no idea of how that Friday night and the decisions thereafter affected me as a young woman. But, no. He was referring to him having no idea that I considered him to be “The One” that all others were compared. (I say “all others” like I was some floozy, but I wasn’t at all…in fact, I had the same boyfriend for seven years and he referred to me as “The Ice Princess”…LOL)

Anyway, he was commenting on how he had no idea I had used him as my “litmus test” and if he had only known, he would have tried harder…

Then the scene has a new person emerging from the shadows of my past and he says his peace…

“Trust me. She is easy to walk away from.”

And I woke up. The temperature in my bedroom must have been around 250 degrees because the sweat was just pouring off of me. My head was spinning and my heart was racing.

At this point, maybe it isn’t such a great idea to write this memoir of mine.