I woke up this morning from a disturbing dream in which college roommie and I were talking and she revealed she’d been in email contact for quite some time with a guy from my high school past. In the dream I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that he’d bothered to stay in touch with her but not with me. I told Dream Roommie, “Back then, he would make or break my entire summer on a daily basis.” And that was true.

Since waking way too early from that dream and being unable to fall back asleep, I’d been in this sticky web of emotional nostalgia, and not in a good way. It’s dark and murky, what I feel. Secrecy and real trouble surround this guy, and yet he always sneaks into my dreams just often enough for me to keep looking for him, to make sure he’s still alive. I’d house-cleaned him a hundred times, he’d disappointed me at least that often, but every time he emerges in a dream I return to the same disturbed state.

I sought for old contact from him on Friendster. He’d found me in 2003 on that site, left a vague email about wondering how I’d greet him after all these years, with a hug? With a slap? He wrote that he’d been to hell and didn’t think he had actually ever come back. Said now that he’s finally found me, he hopes I haven’t forgotten him. I wrote back that sometimes people I care about have to take the walk to hell for their own reasons and altho I recognize that, it doesn’t make watching it any easier. I let him know my hand is outstretched to help and whether he takes it or not is a matter of choice. Some disturbing response from him about how he’s been shot at, bribed, arrested, homeless, and that he’s learned in his adventures walking the world and getting into adventures, like Cain (from “Kung Fu”), that life is cold and uncaring, that all people have ulterior selfish motives for any kind acts they do, and that self-serving unjustness rules the world. He said even his contacting me is selfish although sincere — he is lost and wishes to be found; he hopes to rekindle a friendship that was regrettably neglected. I wrote back that I have the same phone numbers he’d last had. Without hearing more from him, he promptly and mysteriously disappeared again.

I contacted him through the same means some 2 years after this (after another disturbing dream that I’d traveled up north to find him, and I could not, and he wasn’t where he said he’d be, he never picked up his phone, and no matter what I tried I came to dead ends) he responded 20 days later apologizing for losing contact, said that he’d been trying to sort out issues for some time and haven’t kept in touch with many people. Said I have always been “too good” to him and therefore apologizes for not keeping in touch with me. Wrote that he trusts I’m doing well except for my overthinking which he’s sure I’m still doing; that I’m too smart for my own good and that ignorance is bliss. Ended on “hope to hear from you soon.” And disappeared again. That was 2 year ago.

He is and had always been vaporous to me, elusive to grab but simultaneously everywhere in a cold thin veil of mist. You could never feel secure around him. You could never really penetrate his vibes, get a good read on what and why he does or says what he did or said to me. At least, I couldn’t.

I think his recent appearance in my dream wasn’t about him, it was about what he represented. Yesterday, I ran into someone who I thought I was worth more to than how he was treating me. It bothered me to the point where it bothered me how much it bothered me, that I was treated like any common acquaintance from the street, as if we didn’t once share a closeness that permitted (no, embraced) the rare entry by a non-significant-other into our most private fears and thoughts. Yesterday, I felt as insignificant to this person as I had felt a hundred times with the guy from my past. Like, I had given you so much of me and you drank it all because you needed me, and you could not be bothered to stand by me on my most important day when I needed you in return, and you didn’t come, and you didn’t call, and I didn’t matter, and I don’t know why.

The entire time I’ve been writing this post, this has been playing in the background of my mind:
You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

So I thought I’d look up the rest of the lyrics. And it was me, ages 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

“My Immortal” – Evanescence

I’m so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
‘Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won’t leave me alone

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus:]
When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you’d screamed I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me

You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus]

I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone
But though you’re still with me
I’ve been alone all along

[Chorus]