i had a dream about katie the other night.  needless to say, any dream involving her is bitter sweet.  and that’s understating the matter.  whenever she enters my thoughts, my heart aches, my stomach knots up, and my brain looses focus for anything else.  to some small extent, i relive our turbulent relationship all over again.  thankfully, thoughts of her are both brief and rare.

dreams, on the other hand, break me.  very rarely do i have a dream that lingers into the waking hours of my day.  it seems nowadays the only dreams i remember involve her.  i can have a thought of her and, with some concentration, cast it off.  the dreams are much harder to leave behind.  and i can rationalize two reasons for this.  all the dreams include two aspects that the thoughts lack.  one, in the dreams, she is always coming back to me, always apologetic.  she’s always aware of how she hurt me and confronts me to make amends.  in the dreams, i always, always, always get her back (though i always wake up before anything else happens).  two, the irregular and random thoughts are consistently devoid of any visualization.  my waking brain cannot accurately recall her face, her smile her cute little figure, the way she smells.  the waking thoughts are memories without substance.  the dreams, on the other hand, are in living color and full of life.  in my dreams she is standing in front of me.  i can see her curly reddish-brown hair.  i can see her smile and i can smell her perfume.  i can hear her voice asking for my forgiveness.

and i wake up.  just a blink before she had been standing before me, then i awake to more familiar surroundings.  all over again she’s gone and its all i can do to keep from curling up in a ball and weeping.

why would my brain do this?  if dreams are supposed to be our subconcious working out little problems, little dilemmas, what is it these dreams are supposed to resolve for me?  my waking brain has let her go, given up any hope of seeing or speaking to her again.  what could my unconcious possibly feel still needs to be done?  i used to see her everywhere: walking on the street, driving in her car, shopping at the mall.  now the only place she haunts me is in my dreams.  it’s the mornings and days that follow such a dream that make me never want to sleep again.