11.03.09 : 11:54 pm I feel like an idiot. What game have I been playing for the past three years? It should have been clear that we were running full speed in opposite directions. This realization only hit me a few days ago after a horrifyingly real nightmare which involved a long brunette wig shooting out of my closet and me on the floor, paralyzed and weighed down by an invisible force. Now I know what it is to wake up. Wait, is that what the dream was trying to tell me? Did I just figure out some elusive symbolism? I was exposed and vulnerable, naked in the dream, crawling around on my dirty bedroom floor amidst cat hairballs when the door to my closet opened quite violently and I saw the hair, strung up like a dress. I recoiled in terror because it reminded me of watching The Ring, and attempted to crawl back toward my closed bedroom door. I could see the sunlight and my cat's faces under the door, beckoning me to freedom from the oppression I felt. But I could not move fast enough. I was a fly trapped in ointment as a darkness descended upon me that was so heavy I had to repeatedly reassure myself out loud, "Move. Keep moving. You can move. Fight it." And I kept looking under the crack of the door towards the light and the cats who were now sticking their paws as far as they could go under the door in an attempt to reach me. I told them I was coming and that I wouldn't give up. Then I woke up, sitting upright with my arms extended, still thinking I was pulling myself along the filthy hardwood floor, away from the horrible brown wig and ominous closet. I got out of bed in slow-motion, inspecting carefully everything that I passed on my walk down the hallway. One can never take too many precautions when determining if the reality is a dream or not. What do you do when your dreams have infiltrated waking life? My apartment never looks different in my dreams, nor do I or my friends or my furniture. Calmly I huddled into a blanket and realized it was your birthday. I checked something online and saw that you changed your relationship status. In the four years we have known one another you have never mentioned a relationship. Now it is there for the world to see. Do you know that feeling of sprinting for a goal, running so hard that breath doesn't seem to matter because something else is fueling your body. I wanted to attain this person, but people are not commodities. I hit a wall running. I am moving on, and it hurts. A few weeks ago I got so desperate for some emotional change within me that I prayed for guidance. I wanted anything as long as it would help me move up or on. I couldn't deal with the nostalgia and the melancholy. Every day I got distracted thinking about our past and fantasizing about our future that whole hours would pass before I realized I had merely been staring out the window. I didn't know myself anymore and what scared me most was, at times, thinking that I was actually feeling at home in this misery. That feeling depressed and longing for you was better than feeling nothing at all towards you. I got what I wished for. Now I know and I'm thankful. I shouldn't have been such a coward this whole time. The truth is that I was too terrified to hear the truth before. I was constantly disappointed without even knowing the reality. It's all over and I feel like I'm finally seeing the light of day. << >>