in dreams

After following someone down the road past my house and wondering where he was going, after going to see Elizabethtown by myself with just a huge soda to keep me awake and wired, with itchy fresh tattoos on my back and Neko Case on the stereo to sing along with, I headed home and fell asleep to have one of those vivid dreams that stays with you, at least in parts, for days afterward.

A dream like a sci-fi movie with me as a leading character, a world I've never seen but a lot like this one. One where I was with a group of people running a pirate radio station, sort of Blade Runner meets Pump Up the Volume.

But the thing about this dream was the boy in it. Normally your dreams are populated by people you know, or even famous faces that you see so often it seems like you know them. But this boy was nobody I've ever met or seen, and yet if I saw him on the street now I'd know it and feel like I know him already. And it was one of those dreams where I felt in my bones that this person loved me, woke up with that feeling that somewhere, somebody does love me. That feeling you get when you're in love with someone far away and you've just gotten off the phone, maybe, or read a letter.

But of course, it's just a dream. Still, I'll even take a dream sometimes after certain moments in my life. After a conversation with a 'friend' (I use that term loosely) who says without thinking, "Do you think he was dating that girl at the same time as you? I mean, since he was always busy. Not that I know anything--I don't know anything about it..."

Of course I've thought about that. I've thought of every possibility. What do you think I am, a trusting person? I always think everyone's lying to me, even when they've given me no reason to think so. When a boy suddenly tells me that he's going to see other people, you bet your sweet ass that I've thought, "He must have been with her already."

But you know, we've been split for months now. I was fine about it until I saw him last week, and then the morning after having this conversation with said 'friend,' I see him again. Like the world's conspiring to not let me move on. So I go back to replaying conversations in my brain, adding things to arguments we've already had, picturing his face on the heavy bag at my kickboxing class. Wondering what the hell he's doing in my neighborhood, and wishing that any of the boys I long-distance flirt with were around to give me a hug and tell me I'm wonderful in person rather than over the phone. All I've got is a dream of someone that I haven't met yet. Maybe I will someday. Or maybe my brain's just making things up to remind me that there are other people out there in the world.

In Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides makes reference to words that the English language lacks, like "the happiness that attends disaster." I could make a list of my own necessary words. "That heart-clenching when you cross paths with someone you loved once." "The anger at yourself when you can't quite get over things." There's "the desire to run when one feels like falling for someone," and to go with that, "the sick feeling when you are suddenly, unexpectedly alone." Or, of course, "The feeling that somewhere, somebody loves you."