I’ve had a couple weird dreams about the “ex” lately… and they’ve been similar. The first one was yesterday, must’ve been late morning because I woke up with it right there on my mind. It was a phone call, and there was his voice on the other side. Comforting me about something, nothing specific, but always able to support me in exactly the way I needed. That was like old times. We spoke, and I drifted off into that contented sleep you have when you know that somewhere, theres a true friend who cares about the state of your spirit. I woke up wistfully with a slight chestache. That particular comfort has been missing from me for some time now.
The second dream was last night. In this instance, it could’ve been current times in an alternate universe. In this vision, we had an apartment together. 2 bedrooms, and my room was abandoned, mostly bare but with just enough of my belongings strewn about to let me know that I’d once lived here. Now though, I lived somewhere else where I was currently making my own home, I think it was my current, IRL place. It certainly matched the state of it – struggling to settle in, and then approaching the point of no return – soon, it will be my home indefinitely and I will regard it as such, slipping in and out with comfortable familiarity. But right now, wherever it is still cold, vacant, and… a place he’s never been. This dream is definitely a mirror.
Dream Me walks into the shared place in an onerous mood under the pretense of retrieving a few things (they can’t be anything of importance – the place is threadbare. Why am I here?) He’s there, in his room, and upon my entrance our eyes connect for some time. On my end, emotions are extreme. I’m exasperated, searching, having come to this place ostensibly for belongings knowing damn well I was desperate for answers. He stays in his place, and offers… nothing. Again, this dream is accurate AF. I don’t have to spiritually dissect this at alll.
Why did it end like this? I think it was prompted by my Mom’s visit. We were catching up over dinner, and she said to me, “you know, you never did tell me what happened with you and your friend.” I scowl at her. That isn’t true… I don’t think it is. After the fallout, she asked me about how it went. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about him anymore Mom. That’s done.” She inquired further. The truth is, I don’t really recall what I told her. Because… I don’t really know what happened. I probably rambled some vague summary of my feelings about it. It was probably the set of feelings I don’t mind letting people know I have, you know, the emotions where you’re still in control. “I was mad because..” “I was irritated that…”, skipping right past the true emotions that feel powerless to me – “I was sad about…”, “I was scared of…”. In fact, I’m sure that’s what I did, because that’s what I always do. Noone gets to hear me say that I’m vulnerable at times, not even the woman that made me. But, Moms be knowin! Her words to me that day were coated in skepticism. “You know Yetty, you can’t be so hard on these men. You need to learn how to be patient with them.” I was stunned to hear that. A while later, I’d hear the exact same sentiment from a dear male friend. He happened to know the situation. “How’s [so and so]? You’ve been visiting on the low again?” he quipped. “Nahh, that’s dead.” I respond cooly. The version of me y’all see is soo cool man! And she’s not even trying. That’s really who she thinks she is.
“Damn Yetty, you really be icing these n*ggas! You still a cold one I see.” The Real Me tried to look at him and get him to see her, just like she tried to scream out at Mom over the phone. “I did try!!” Real Me wants to say. And here we are months later, and face-to-face, my Mom gently calls me out for lying to myself. I know that’s what triggered this subconscious series of events. Ugh. God bless my mother for always coming bearing gifts.
The truth is that, I don’t know exactly what happened that required this, this friendship, this “relationship” to end. What I do know is that ultimately, he quit me. And I do have abandonment issues as far as relationships go – I’d have taken any other scenario, any other cause and method of estrangement than this one. So, what to do when you’ve been abandoned?
I learned a while about that “closure” is not something we seek from others – It’s something we have to give ourselves. This time I didn’t know how to do it myself, so My Subconscious did it. Isn’t that something?
And now, finally, it’s over.
Footnotes: In seeking closure to this closure, I came across this expert resource on the unfortunate phenomenon of dreaming about exes. So, so sad.