Dream it's over

Last night, I dreamt of my ex of nearly five years. He'd come back into my life, and we were together again. No longer naive, I knew how to ask for what I wanted, and no longer self-loathing, he was open to give it to me.

It was strange, waking up and missing him. Missing him so much I googled him. Yep... still beautiful. I wanted to message him, tell him I love him and that I always have.

But I didn't do this. Because it wasn't reality. What I felt in my dreams was the desire to love beyond my previous capacity to love. I'm smarter now. More experienced. So I used my smarts to analyze the facts: that Christopher is not in the country, and to the best of my knowledge, he's still with the girl he started dating a couple years after me. This is reality. I do love him, and I always will, in my way. But awake and no longer lined in the silver haze of dreams, I remember him, really remember our life together, and know that he wasn't who I dreamt of last night; I dreamt of the man I want. A man who is passionate, open, and able. Not the man I will always love, in my way, but the man I have yet to love.

that's one rosy heap of trash.

It is hard to offend me. It is hard to really hurt my feelings. And I've found that as I've gotten older, it has gotten easier for me to lick the wound and move on. But when someone close to me throws me under the bus, it really rips me up. I know we will all fail one another- I have certainly failed many in my life- and I've had to learn to apologize. I've had to learn how to empathize. It's easier to be less shitty when you put yourself in someone else's shoes. I have also learned that just because I have learned doesn't mean everyone else has. Someone recently said to me "Amanda, I think you think everyone is like you, or should be". That idea has been swarming my head. He was speaking of one particular conversation in which I said I don't understand the negative nancies of the world, the "fml" people. I don't understand why people "fuck" their whole lives because something doesn't go their way. He was, of course, one of those negative... neds, and I'm afraid I made him feel as if his feelings were insignificant. I have known pain in my life, and I know what it feels like to be made small in that experience. So, I extended his observation into my deeper human experience. I think, in many ways, it perplexes me that people are they way they are. I know we are all different by design (and thankfully so!), but a lot of things, to me, seem like common sense. Why not move on and be happy? Why not let life have a rosy tint even if the picture is a pile of garbage? That conversation is haunting me now as I contemplate the butthurt feelings I have toward a close friend of mine who did, indeed, offend my dainty little feelings. Do I hold her insensitivity over her head? Not because I'm petty or because I'm bitter, but because I want to offer her the opportunity to empathize, to stand in my shoes and change the climate. We gotta move on and be good to one another. We have to say we're sorry, and mean it. We have to deal with one another in compassion and openness, with the WILLINGNESS to be wrong.

I don't expect an apology, but I've said my piece and it's in your hands. We can move on when you're ready to walk in my size 9 shoes.