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Looking for Dreams
By andrea peters
Last edited: Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Posted: Saturday, March 20, 2004
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When a loved one leaves. The questions are left behind.
Sometime ago when life was so much simpler we shared a life made from a dream. Two lonely people, different in so many ways, discovering one another amongst a sea of bodies. Our meeting was not unlike so many others, yet it shared its own flavor and wonder with the both of us. We couldn't see beyond tomorrow and didn't want to. Had no need to. Forever was much too far off...
Somehow in one of life's funny miracles we found that we wanted to be with one another. We made laughter was a part of our routine. For us a way to deal with the aches and pains, a way to bridge the difficult times and to strengthen the happy ones.
We found advantages in our youth and gladly took them. Innocence protected, for a while, the reality of a hardened world where people really suffer, and pain is not an actor following a script but a person who's life's fabric has torn - and actually bled. What a blissful opportunity to be swallowed up in each other. A time to ignore every machination, and trial. A time to use an unbreakable Love as a shield.
Routine had a way of changing that. Not just with everyone else but with us too. Soon the highly charged romantic whirlwind became a subdued breeze. Too soon. How often we longed for our breath to be sucked out of our very soul like the Sun chasing away the night. To feel the power and intensity of a charging bull running through our veins. What an incredible feeling. To be Invincible. Taste euphoria. And what a bitter pill to realize that it was also so temporary.
Soon passion was replaced by an undercurrent which relentlessly carried us forward in time, floating, unaware at times, reacting instead of instigating. We became people living their lives patiently, waiting as if for a re birth of a past life, an elapsed memory. Too often we forgot to contemplate the tide that brought us to where we were, that made us into who we are. And instead thought about who we wanted to be. Where we wanted to be.
We shared experiences that changed our dreams, and tried to meld them into reality. What a surprise it was to one day look back and realize that what we once so treasured as much as life itself, has become to us something common. Our Love. Something steady, not bursting forth like an explosion but burning slowly as our candles grow shorter and shorter. It seemed almost natural to want to burn more brightly. To try and taste the Heat and the Passion. But we made that choice long ago when we started this journey. Wherever it took us, changed us, became us. We would remain. Us two.
So now, I find myself asking, "What will it take to find contentment in a world that offers none? What should we do to seek it out, hunt it down? Should we risk the one thing that we vowed to each other? Should we look for our dreams in another pasture, another place?". I know that mortality induces us to be selfish and our hearts desires are knocking loudly in our ears. It is hard to see down what trail our dreams now lie. It is even more difficult to see what dream we are still looking for.
I don't know what you are hoping to find. I know it is your dream. And dreams are what give us hope. What I am not sure about is what the pursuit of that dream is worth - when what we possess is better than what most have - at least to me. I do know one thing for a certainty. On a cloudy, cold Thursday morning at the end of February, I woke up before the alarm - and turned it off. I lay back down and rested and listened to the wind blow outside and to the rhythm of your breath. I felt content with the simple knowledge that you were there – beside me.
Before I left that morning I passed your side of the bed. Your head was peeping out from under the covers which were piled high on your side. I bent over and touched your hair and lightly kissed your forehead. You smiled. I whispered goodbye. That was the last time I saw you.
I don't know what I've done, but I'm sure it's a hundred things. I know that they have deeply affected you and I'm sorry for your pain. I've tried to be your dream, to give you everything I could think of, but I missed something.
Today when I woke up dawn was breaking. It was a cloudy and cold morning in March. The wind was blowing and for awhile I lay in bed and listened, quietly. My heart and breath struggled to find a contented rhythm because there was something wrong, something missing.
You.
I knew your side of the bed lay empty - but I looked anyway. Your pillow sat where I placed it the night before. The covers unmoved, undisturbed. I reached over to rest my hand in the place where you should be and felt the coolness of the sheets under my fingertips, a place that should have been warm. Warm and tender, like your forehead under my lips as I would kiss you each morning. I took the deepest breath my lungs could hold, but I could not capture the faint wisp of your favorite perfume.
It was then that I knew you were really gone.
Looking for dreams.
I hope you find them.
Perhaps you will find me in one. Waiting.
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