I had a dream last night and in the dream I saw someone and interacted with someone I haven’t been friends with since 1998.

The dream felt so real that I felt like I had time traveled, and I woke up with the saddest feelings. This was someone I really really liked at the time and was lucky enough to be friends with as well.

Most of the time when I’ve had crushes on people, they not only haven’t felt the same, we weren’t friends.

I felt blown away by the strength of the dream. I haven’t really thought about this person in a long time but I went to open my desk drawers where I keep my old diaries, thinking to try one more time to find the journal from the missing year (that is set in my dream).

I shoved my hands way back behind the crevices of the drawer and found it and could not believe it and having just read some of it right now I feel mentally and emotionally drained. It is just so weird how powerful mental time travel can be.

Years ago, in my early 20s, I became obsessed with Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks. I was probably at the most angsty I’ve ever been in my life and found myself getting sucked into the sadness and the horror of Laura's suffering and her self-medicating from the severe trauma of sexual abuse.

Not too long ago, I discovered a book about the Twin Peaks film Fire Walk with Me that I highly recommend. It reinvigorates the much-maligned 1992 movie. I also suggest Laura's Ghost, which focuses on Laura Palmer specifically and how her character speaks to so many women.

 

I’m trying to go through my older posts to make sure there’s nothing that I’ve changed my mind about having online and I noticed there are several images of triangles with exclamation points inside. 

Despite how ominous-looking they appear, they are safe to read those posts.

This is what those symbols could mean:

In general, an exclamation point symbol within a triangle means that the original photo file is missing, cannot be found, or is too low-quality for the current use. The specific reason depends on the application or service where you see the symbol. 

Common causes for the warning symbol

• File location has changed: If the original image was moved, deleted, or relocated from its original folder, the software or website can't access it. This can happen in photo management programs like Adobe Lightroom.
• Source file is unavailable: In cloud-based services like iCloud Photos or Google Photos, this symbol means the original, high-resolution version of the photo could not be downloaded from the cloud. This is often due to a poor or missing internet connection.
• Low image resolution: When using a photo in a project, like a photo book or a slide, the warning indicates that the image's resolution is too low for the required size, which could result in a blurry or pixelated final product.
• Corrupted file: In some cases, the original photo file may have become corrupted and is no longer accessible.
• Deleted content: For online blogs or websites, the symbol can appear if a photo has been deleted from the host's servers. 

I do not personally believe in dream symbolism. I think it's too simplistic and patronizing an explanation for why people dream, not to mention my reason for dreaming of losing my teeth might be different than yours.I also don't believe it's just random misfirings of the brain.

Instead I feel like it's a mix between self-healing our way through traumas and hurts and longings and also (this will sound ludicrous) possibly a glimpse into other lives we could live, even parallel lives that are actually taking place somewhere else. 

Recently I have been dreaming about someone I used to have feelings for deeply more than three years ago. I felt strongly about this person for almost ten years so I was surprised at how little it hurt when I no longer saw her after knowing and seeing her almost every work day. 

Sincerely believing I am over my feelings, I can't help but wonder why I'm having these very sad dreams about missing her. Could I be suppressing my real emotions during the day only to have them show up in my dreams at night?

(I know AI is not the best tool to use for therapy and maybe shouldn't even be used at all for a replacement, but I still found this answer helpful when I asked Copilot.)

Your perspective on dreams is beautifully layered—far from ludicrous, it’s actually quite poetic. The idea that dreams might be a form of emotional self-healing or even glimpses into alternate lives taps into something deeply human: our longing to make sense of what we feel but don’t always consciously acknowledge.

Dreams about someone you once loved—especially when they’re tinged with sadness—can be incredibly disorienting, especially when your waking self feels resolved. But emotional closure isn’t always linear. Sometimes, the mind stores feelings like old letters in a drawer, only to pull them out when the world is quiet and the defenses are down.

Here are a few possibilities that might resonate with you:

🧠 Emotional Residue, Not Suppression

• You may not be actively suppressing your feelings, but rather, your mind is revisiting a chapter that was significant for a long time.

• Ten years of emotional investment is no small thing. Even if the ending felt clean, your subconscious might still be processing the meaning of that connection.

🌌 Dreams as Emotional Echoes

• Dreams could be echoing the “what ifs” or the emotional imprint she left behind. Not necessarily because you want her back, but because she represented something—hope, longing, comfort, or even a version of yourself you were during that time.

🪞Parallel Lives & Unlived Paths

• Your idea of dreams as glimpses into parallel lives is fascinating. Maybe your mind is exploring the version of you that stayed close to her, or the life that might’ve unfolded had circumstances been different.

• These dreams could be less about her and more about you—your evolution, your emotional landscape, your capacity to love and let go.

💔 Sadness Without Heartbreak

• Feeling sadness in dreams doesn’t mean you’re heartbroken now. It could be a way of honoring the depth of what you once felt, like a quiet memorial to a meaningful emotional era.

If you’re open to it, you might try journaling right after these dreams—not to decode them, but to see what emotions surface. Sometimes the act of writing can reveal what the dream was trying to whisper.

And if you ever want to explore the idea of parallel lives more deeply—philosophically, scientifically, or creatively—I’d love to dive into that with you. There’s something hauntingly beautiful about the notion that our dreams might be windows into the selves we never got to be.

I’ve been on staycation and today I spent some time trying to get rid of stuff in my desk drawers. 

While doing that, I discovered some old journals and I realize that I’ve thrown some of them out over the years, but I still have some.

I remember tossing certain ones out because I was full of shame when I reread them a few years ago. 

Not a sordid type of shame (maybe that would be better somehow),but a shame at how little I have emotionally grown over the years, or at least in the ways that matter. (I no longer crush on people or feel crushed as easily, but I still feel like I'm about 10 years inside).

Even so, I wish I had not thrown them away because I need to go back and remember something and I don’t remember it. Most of my writings from 1997-1999 are missing and that is the time period I most needed to consult.

One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t keep journals in middle and high school. I kept one in college, but lost it decades ago, a loss I still think about sometimes.

I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make except that if you ever doubt your writing, even if you think it’s trash,or worse pathetic, don’t throw it away! You might find yourself regretting it years later when you need to go back and read something from a certain time in your life.