Well, it looks like I’m just going to diver right back fucking into this, headfirst, long and smooth, hair flowing behind me, gliding through the water, pausing in the silky, soft flow of the water behind me as I slither through it. In this long moment, it is just the water and no air, and inertia, that holds me until I burst back up through the surface to take a breath. It is nothing but peace and movement.

This morning that awakening was not quite so gentle. No, not one bit. I was however, gasping for air, the only similarity. I was jolted awake by the snooze button, happily, as I had been caught in a dream trap of my own where everything is wrong. I keep repeating, searching, not being able to do things, find things. Caught on a loop of anxiety, stress, searching, revisiting, returning. The tiny one bedroom secret apartment at the top of some other building, a warehouse or something? Is it supposed to be London? Chicago? San Francisco? I’ve been there before in my dreams, was delighted to find that it was mine, and threw some sort of party or generraly had a great time. On this visit, there was a squatter, a broken tiny tv, the old box kind, and things strewn about. Not a lot of things, not like the god damn house here in California, but things nonetheless. I had gone up there to have privacy, perhaps a tryst with a sex doll, that had earlier been mistaken for a test subject and given a makeover at a counter that had promised it would really, actually, only take a minute. So many things happened in this dream and it’s like a mixed soup in my head right now, if the soup was in a whirlpool. The bright sunshiny day song playing on the radio right now seems to be purposely, ironically, teasing me.

Platform heels, once so easy to walk in, have now become a part of my treacherous landscape navigation in my dreams. They have now become difficult to navigate, like so many other things in these dreams, in my life, and they are on my body, like the torn neglige dress that was peach at the end, the color of my flesh, but somehow started out a sturdier, Dolce kind of fabric, holding me in and up with the black platform heels that I had to go up and down the stairs in. Teetering, I would fall. But it didn’t hurt. It was only the fear of pain in the dream, unlike the very real pain that I felt a few weeks ago, when unsuspecting me took a tumble in the pair of seemingly benign beige flatforms that I had been effortlessly wearing for long enough that I felt safe in them. Maybe that’s what hurt the worst, that I felt safe, and then lost everything, writhing in pain just a moment after walking happily in the sun with my daughter, cold soda pop in hand.

I was looking for you again, in this dream. I was traveling, but was at least in the same time zone as you. I think I was up north from DC, I remember this vaguely. I was north enough to be close to you, even if you were at your office. I’ve never been there, nor looked it up, but ironically it turns out that Buck’s County is where I’m from, if you go way back. Generations back, a large part of my ancestors were from there, the colony of Buck’s, whoever he is. I’m sure I’ll find that out at some point during a late-night search, intrigued by the lives of the past and their connection to me.

It was all an amalgamation of things, as usual. There was a mall, where I was detained by the counter lady who promised it would only take a minute, even though I told her no. She mixed something just for me, it was a foundation color into which she blended a reddish iron color and a golden bronze as apparently this was my skin tone, in another dimension at least. Even then, I thought it strange. Then she put it on the mannequin, or the person, who later turned into the sex doll. In the mall there was a restaurant, “upscale American”, the style that a group of old friends adore, for cocktails, eats, and a bit of drama. I met them there and they did not disappoint. They were in the outdoor seating, a grand terrace that went over the highway. The restaurant designer had somehow declared that this was the coolest thing ever, to be able to eat high above an actual highway, with cars racing by underneath. Chalk it up to culture shock, or just everything wrong with America, but I hated it, obviously. I was there to see them, though, not to critique the architecture. It was mid or late meal when I arrived, someone was leaving, and it broke up quickly. Q was taking a wrapped rack of ribs to go, so that he could devour them in peace at home. I told him that I loved making them, and for the price, that mine would probably be better. He told me they were 75 dollars.

Once out of the restauraunt, back in a side lobby or plush corridor of the mall, I realised that I could try to call you, try to find you. I sat down on one of those extra comfy, industrially made chairs that are for high traffic use. My platform heels were making me unstable. I called the Mandarin, and you weren’t staying there, so I tried to google your office address, and the phone was difficult to use, my fingers were fumbly and against me. But I found it, it was close, so I went there.

I had to climb some stairs in those platforms, which was hard. Your partner or assistant said you were busy. When I saw you, you didn’t see me. You were going out to lunch with your younger, hot, Italian girlfriend. A goomah really, she was perfection. Fun, young, loving, and a bit bossy. I followed you, as one can in dreams, to see you go to a hotel and playfully fuck. You were wearing a cabbie’s hat, looking like a teenager from the 90’s. You were happy and having fun. But did you love her, like you loved me?

Did you ever really love me, or was it all a game too?

Then I woke up. Startled awake. Shaking, relieved and full of wondering – what the hell was that?? Because this is just the ending, not the beginning of the dream. It was long and looping with many other locations which I cannot still remember, as my head is full with its dramatic finish. It will come back to me throughout the day, if I just pay attention to the signs, if I leave space open for it to return.

My first thought was, Now I can really call you. My fingers will work, I can just call and start the process of finally getting in touch with you, finally having this conversation that I wanted to have after so many years, to just be in peace with you, to prove that it was all real, that it was love. I was sure, clear, and confident, ready for that google search to be the very next thing that I would do. But even that series of actions seemed very unsafe, so I grabbed my things and got here, with coffee, to the page to try to see what the hell this is all about, all of it, but maybe just this little part of it for now.

I have had dreams of you for so long, so many times, over and over for so many years now. What is it, 16? I have been married for 15 so does that make it almost 17 now? This is not for therapy, its too short of a time. It needs much more than this. I want to speak with you but I am afraid either way. What is to become of that conversation, what is the end game? Maybe there is none.

See, I know the facts, the events, I can remember a lot of them very clearly. Two and a half years of them apparently. That much I cannot remember, that’s sure, but highlights, times, and feelings are clear. We met, we got along, we liked each other. You chased me, I let you. I knew that seeing you again would change my life, and I was not sure if I wanted it to be changed that greatly. So I waited a little bit. It was not a game, I was not playing you with the waiting, I just needed to be ready, to be sure, to want to have my life changed. So we started up, you in your cowboy boots and looking at a property in Virginia, a farmhouse if I remember correctly. It didn’t, it should’ve, struck me as odd that this was your choice of a first date, a follow up from an hours’ long conversation on, ugh, Valentine’s Day, the night we met. I remember that my guy before that, at the time, had asked me out on the evening of the 14th, to which I said no, as you clearly don’t accept such a significant date the day of, or evening of, as I had clearly made other plans with my best girlfriend to go to a bar and see where the night would take us.

Your down-home, corporate cowboy look and house visit didn’t strike me as odd, no, it just filled me with a gentle softness to be with a man like you, who was also looking for a new beginning, in the horse country of northern Virginia. I remember the light pull of the tall grasses against my ankles as we trugged through the backyard, where the agent left us to wander. We walked in silence, the best kind. I felt small next to you as you towered over me. You were timid but confident, it was obvious that your parents had raised you to know how to treat a woman, and I liked that.

But what now? 17 years later, why is this so in my head, so often, and right now? Because I am here, in the same country as you? This all makes me feel like a crazy stalker, thinking of you so much in my dreams. An internet sleuth, I am, tried and true. It was my basic google skills that enabled me to figure you out. You were still with your partner, with whom you share a child. You lived at her house, your house, with her. You didn’t have a small place on her brother’s property, like you said. Even though you spent the week with me, you went home to her, to her house, your house, to see your child, and her. You came back to me on Sunday afternoons for ice cream and walks, cuddles and gentle, loving fucks.

I must stop for now as the morning is old now. My hands are shaking and I need to take pause from this. I have looked at your website, deleted my old note to you on LinkedIn, which I don’t think that you’ve read. I have looked at your website, your personal blog, I think, and I know that I can contact you directly if I want to. That is enough as for now, I must wait. I must process all of this, yet again, but in the present moment. It is always so strange when I come here, to California, as it all comes out. In my mothers house, our mothers house, now ours, it all comes out in full force. There is something different about the energy here, they all say, and it never disappoints. So far, it has been a lot, and its only the 3rd waking day that I am here. 3 days and 3 nights have passed, and I am already blown open by being with myself. I must now set this aside until some time has passed and I can open this particular can of worms, once again. I must take my time, as it’s not often that you get the chance to ask the dead why they left you. Till then.