Only when I sleep

I dreamt about him last night. A beautiful, bittersweet dream that has left me feeling… well I don’t know how I’m feeling, and I don’t know why, so I'm getting it all down on here to let go of it and then get on with it.

I’m really having a good time at the moment: work is good, although in the wonders of NHS restructuring my job seems to have been forgotten! But although I’m stressed about that I’m equally quite confident that it can be rectified. X and Y are X and Y, but fine and not playing up too much. My social life is fairly quiet but that’s through choice, and I’m happy with that choice. Money is always an issue, but I’m in a better place financially than I have been for a long time. Emotionally, I’m moving on, putting things behind me, hardly even thinking of him at all, successfully beginning to erase all memories. I resolved that this year there would be no more of this. My subconscious seems to have missed that message…

It’s a dream I’ve had before, more than once. There are some slight variations, but its always the same location and always me, always him. I’m staying in a beautiful apartment that is located right in a department store. Literally, the lobby area leads directly into what could be John Lewis’s. The store sometimes changes, sometimes there are food halls, sometimes it is only fixtures and fittings, sometimes there is even a bar area. Sometimes there are people in it, sometimes it is empty, but it is always an apartment, and it is always in a large shop.

Last night, the kids were with me, and we were borrowing the apartment for some reason. A large opulent place with lots of rooms and gadgets, and long, long curtains separating half of the living area from the other. The kids wouldn’t settle, and were taking there time getting in bed and out again, although it was late, but finally quieted down. I struggled to pull the curtains to give myself some privacy in the front room, and then he arrived. I know I wasn’t expecting him. I know that even in the dream I knew we were apart, but I wasn’t surprised. So we talked a bit; what we had each been doing, some teetering around the subject of us, but never any discussion as to why he was here, just an acceptance that he was.

He asked to see the kids, despite knowing they were awake, and the impact that would have after the work I have done to remove him from their heads. It was important to him, really important, and I know I judged it as a sign that he was back. I can’t fully remember more details. Dreams retain a clarity that is all too fleeting before they slip into jagged memories and are usually lost forever. That’s why I need to record it now, while most of it remains. I know they were happy to see him, although X was quiet, very quiet, which is unheard of for her, and Y, the quiet one was chatty.

Then, with the wonder of dreams, it was just he and I, roaming around the store outside this flat. Messing with things, bouncing on beds, squirting shaving foam and generally acting like a couple of kids. And laughing, lots and lots of laughing. Suddenly back in the apartment, and kissing like we used to, fitting just like we used to, loving each other and then lying together and feeling happiness and contentment. And the dream was right. It felt perfectly right and perfectly wonderful.

But I guess real life intervenes, even in the best of subconscious thoughts, and slowly it began to dawn. I began to sense that he wasn’t back. That I wasn’t the future, just a stop-gap in whatever he was currently doing. There was almost a joviality about him, a checking of his phone, a disrespectful air, and an unspoken knowledge dawned that he had somebody else, at least one. And although he didn’t physically change, he slowly began to meld into somebody else, who looked just like him but who had never truly cared who I was, who had come back into my life, and back into the children’s and was almost certainly going to leave again.

And as usually happens whenever I have bad dreams, whenever I don’t want to face whatever it is, my brain woke me.

So, at 1am, I wake disorientated and confused; a mixture of happy, warm and glowing from remembering and feeling again, but sad, so sad that it didn’t stop there, and despite the painful ending, just for a little while, it makes me miss him once more.