I dreamt of him last night.
Floating somewhere within the deep recesses of sub consciousness I felt the warmth of his arms encircling me in a comforting embrace. Not the romantic kind, but in the way a friend would comfort another – with understanding and compassion. As we sat together, his arms around me, he listened to me as I poured out my heart to him just as I did nearly 20 years ago and he was there for me then. He did not judge me or ridicule me. He did not tell me I was stupid or inadequate. He said nothing as I cried on his shoulder and he gently wiped my tears. He just listened.
I knew I was stupid and inadequate, or at least that’s how I felt, but he never saw me that way. He told me I was generous, loving, and kind-hearted and like a caterpillar, someone who just needed to spread her wings and become that beautiful person I was deep within…and that he could see in me. Where, I do not know.
He was my very best friend and we were incredibly close. It never seemed strange to either of us at all that I would be sitting on his knee and not by his side. To anyone who saw us together would assume we were a couple, though that thought had never entered our minds…at least, not at first. And even when it did, it remained in the back of our minds and deep in our hearts. I loved him and he loved me as best friends, who knew everything about each other, yet loved one another just the same. Our love, our friendship, was perfect. We shared everything and we lacked nothing. We didn’t need to be a couple to share a devotion and love. We were best friends and we cherished that. And so I sat upon his knee, crying a river of tears filling an ocean of heartache.
Pain is an incredible emotion. Some say it is a beautiful torture between which there is a fine line with pleasure – I say it is just torture. There are various levels of pain and I think I know almost every one of them in the psychological sense. I have experienced the physical at times but it’s the psychological, the emotional and the mental to which I am no stranger. It is that which is the most unbearable, torturous and excruciating pain. And for twenty years I have paved myself a pathway to which pain and heartache is the only ultimate destination. Why? Punishment, of course. I deserve no better. I threw my only chance of “real” happiness away…because I didn’t deserve that either. The only one who loved me and didn’t judge me and what did I do? I was afraid I would ruin the perfect love we shared, so I did just that. I ruined it. I never deserved someone so perfect, so loving and so understanding…and yet he was just the person for whom I craved. I wanted him more than anything and yet I felt he was so out of reach. We wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, but I wanted the rest of my life to begin as soon as possible, and he wanted to wait till he had established himself so he could provide for us. But I yearned for him so much I wanted him now. Suddenly our perfect love had a wall between us which I had so stupidly constructed. We both reached out for one another but in different directions that we always seemed to miss. Still he continued to love me and was always there for me.
Maybe that’s why I think of him now. For in the times I truly need a friend, my best friend, the one who understands me without judgment, I am merely alone. Two decades on and still aboard the emotional rollercoaster upon which I continually seem to find myself. Days of ups and downs within a field of psychological landmines which I must continually dodge, yet still with a similar end result – nothing I do or say is ever right. I think back to a time I was last happy and I can’t seem to recall such a moment – not really…and definitely not lately. Though I guess happiness these days for me is predominantly defined by the moments where I am not afflicted with heartache or a tirade of verbal abuse, but the days where peace reigns for a time. That is happiness, albeit momentarily. Yet it is those moments for which I yearn these days – where there is no ridicule, no torment, no heartache, pain or verballing. Just peace, sweet peace. Of course it never lasts, but then again what does? Nothing lasts forever.
Except...the bars on my window.
I look through the misty pane now beyond the bars to another life. One for which I yearn, or I don’t deserve and that could have been. Where would I be now had I just been patient and not sabotaged the only real love I had truly known? Would I be happy? Content? Would we still be together? Or like everything else, would that crash and burn as well? After all, my life has been a constant reality check for the adage that “nothing lasts forever”. Would all my yearnings and “what ifs” be the same? I guess I will never know, and all I can do now is sit behind the bars that imprison me within a cell of my own making and dream.
Maybe that IS why I think of him now. Not consciously, but deep within confines of my subconscious that is elicited through dreams. Why do I dream of him? Not because I’m secretly in love with him and want to ride off into the sunset together – but because I yearn for his compassion and understanding; his unconditional love and friendship that I missed so much. He was my best friend and I could do with a friend right now. If I were to ride off into the sunset with him it wouldn’t be because I secretly harboured a love for him all these years – it would be because I longed for an escape from the window from which I gaze longingly each day… my prison cell, where I am my own jailor. The view from this window is one I wish upon and hope for and yet it always seems so out of reach. It seems easier to dream of “what ifs” than it is to continually face the harsh reality of what I have become; of what my life has become. Nothing.
Maybe one day these bars will fade and I could be free again. After all, nothing lasts forever. Not even these bars; not life, not heartache, not peace and most definitely, not love… I know…because the dreams I have of a time that once was I watched slowly fade away and die. In the end everything is just a memory, locked within the confines of another prison, gazing from another window and yearning for another life.
No, nothing lasts forever…it merely just dies.
© Christina aka Stina
13th June 2009
