The Dream

So I had just the loveliest day yesterday and went to bed, very tired, slept through the whole night and woke up in the best mood after a beautiful, sensual dream, still warm and happy feeling his arms around me, his breath still on my neck, his skin against mine and…it was just a dream, I was alone and he wasn’t coming back. Why is my subconscious plotting against me? My current theory is that my subconscious and my GPS are conspiring together. You know how she has it in for me and GPS is satellite so they’ve no trouble staying connected, unlike me and my struggling ocean bound internet connection. It made me question whether I’m really getting over this and moving on or whether I really have made a huge mistake in not just going for it when I had the chance. Please tell me that this will not be my life’s regret forever. I have imprinted on him in a way I didn’t think was possible. And it sucks. Is it wrong to enjoy the dream? To indulge a bit in the memory, is that just picking at the wound forcing it open; not letting it heal?

So how do you change the filter? My first time onboard, I was so happy, after a time, knowing that I was having an amazing once in a lifetime experience that I was then going to take home to another once in a lifetime experience. I know intellectually that there are infinite combinations of completely suitable partnerships and that partnership is not even necessary for happiness and that quite frankly romantic love is irrational and monogamy goes against the natural order. These are arguments I made to Heath early on which he later parroted back to me when things went south. So why is it my heart says, no Laurel, you’ve made a mistake. A mistake you need to work to rectify. And is it possible? As Heath said, a relationship will never move forward if only one person wants it. How is it so possible for him to so completely have moved on and yet I am still in love with him? Am I forgettable, pathetic, just not worthwhile or am I, as he first teased, truly nothing but a dirty ho? Is the universe just cruel? I have to stop drawing inpriation from movies like "The Holiday" and "Chocolat". I mean, Kate Winslett is brilliant and all, but if I hadn’t assumed my love was unrequited, would it have been in the end? And will I have to spend my life wondering what could have been? When does pain end? How do we speed up the process so it feels manageable? And is it possible truly to stay friends with an ex-love? I have to stop living my life like I’m in a movie or some terrible Victorian novel, seeking out the most painful outcome possible. Or if I’m in a movie, can it have a happy ending?

And then there is my poor husband, whom I have fallen so far out of love with, and who has fallen so far out of love with me, yet we both question if there really is anything better out there. Maybe it’s just better to settle for the devil you know, being that we are good friends, fantastic roommates, great travel companions. Maybe that’s enough since love seems fleeting and tempestuous anyway. The man I love is gone, why look for another? Yet, being on this ship, surrounded by newlyweds, new families and octogenarian couples who youthen in front of you when they hold hands and smile at one another; who push eachother around in wheelchairs and assist eachother in their hardships, it seems impossible to think that it is all so unattainable. Maybe that is the dream, to be so happy with another that a hardship, a burden, a sacrifice seems fleeting and meaningless in the face of the joy you share together. I have one couple whom I have truly grown found of and look forward to seeing each night, he's in a wheelchair and she aids him nightly with a smile that would light up an eclipse. I mentioned to her one night how great her smile was and she said, "we're just happy to be here. I mean, still here." G*d I long to find that solace, to be happy just be happy to still be here.