out of reach

I had this dream last night, and for reasons that will become obvious I can’t talk to my wife or any of her friends about it. I’m a week out from my next therapy appointment, so chances are something more pressing will come up between now and then. It’s just something I need to process, whether or not that will help remaining unsure.

I almost never talk about it, but once I was crazy about a girl who didn’t even know I existed. She was part of my extended social circle and there was just something about her, it took my breath away to look at her. Never happened before or since. At the time I thought I loved her, this was before I conclusively proved to myself that love has to be a cooperative act, not a one way emotion. I was obsessed, and I spent a good six months obsessing over her, trying to figure out how to get her to feel the same way about me.

In the end I told her how I felt, and she said she didn’t see me that way, and my heart was broken. Then I rebounded into my disastrous first marriage, but that’s only a footnote to what I’m thinking about today.

I had a dream about her last night, we were flirting and then having sex, and in the middle of it I’m like “look, fun as this is, it’s a fantasy. In the real world you are married to someone else and have a beautiful daughter with him.” and she just shoots me this enigmatic smile….. and I’m disarmed, 15 years of trying to get over her and she still cuts me deep. I want her, even if it’s just a dream, even if it can never be real….

and I think that’s part of my problem. My fantasies are so much better than my reality, and there’s no way to close that gap. I try to focus on what is possible, what I can have, which should be enough, but it isn’t.