music, books, love and kindness

I had the weirdest dream last night and it upset me a lot, not because it was a bad dream, but because it was a good one. In the dream, the building where I work was transported to what I think was the Atlantic City boardwalk, which I used to know well and love as a child.

It was a pretty day and I got to see people from all walks of my life, not just my present. The person I like, the person I have been trying not like for the longest time, even showed up, smiling peacefully at me, which is so not how it would be in real life.

Even more than I do with nightmares, I really work hard to come out of a good dream. Good dreams have a way of making you feel worse once you awake. I swam up from out of my dream (I swear, sometimes, trying to wake up feels like you've been down at the bottom of an ocean and are trying to resurface) and turned on my dvd player to watch "I Love Lucy."

In the old days, when I felt this kind of lonely, I'd pretend somewhere, way far out in outer space, perhaps, there was someone I'd meet someday, someone who could like me back. That used to get me through unbearably quiet days when a teddy bear just wouldn't do.

Now, I know better...false hope is better than no hope at all. And, yet, when I see other people sometimes feel the same way (as below), I wonder if it's not totally bad to still hold out (however unrealistic it may be to) thinking there might be a day you meet that someone special.

There was a time in my life not so long ago, that I experienced a moment that could only be described as pure love and happiness.

It was as if love and happiness were finally real to me and were something tangible, embodied in that moment.

They were in everything I could hear, touch, taste and smell.
I could see them with my very eyes – reflected back at me in someone else’s.
They were all around me, breathing life into me, as if wrapping me up in a blanket.

And in that moment I caught a glimpse of something.
A parallel universe - a way things could have been.
An alternate reality where that love and happiness were mine to keep, a place where I didn’t have to let them go.

I only hope that one day…. many years from now when I am an old lady and I close my eyes for the last time – I will open them again and find myself there. 

― Ranata Suzuki  (as seen on Goodreads)