Dreams

 I have dreams about you. I don't know what that means, or if it means anything. Sometimes I still believe that it means you are reaching out to me in your heart. Other times, I feel that it's my mind trying to put together the pieces of something that can never be reconciled.  

Last night, I dreamed that I was participating in some large-scale international military training program - and that I'd signed up because you were an instructor there. It was in some isolated and badly-supported mountainous region, and there were hundreds of assignments to figure out. Some physical, some weapons-related. None played to my strengths, and I slogged along as best I could. Sometimes, I would catch a glimpse of you - and sometimes I thought you recognized me. But it was not with warmth. I never encounter the loving version of you in my dreams. Only the judging, angry man I met in Amsterdam Centraal that last time - or when I came to your door and tried to talk. I wanted to find you, to take you aside on our own, to say, "I love you. I've never stopped loving you." But I was too ashamed. Too afraid. And I never did. 

Of course, this real-life training course in the Netherlands has been one of the most brutal. To be here, so close to you, to come because I loved you still. To be here because I believed you could find me. The entire decade I've lived here, I've been only a short distance from you - maybe an hours' drive. And you've never come. After my first attempts years ago, I stopped trying to come to you. 

Proximity has been torture. 

What I wanted from you was softness,  a sense that you still loved me. I couldn't find it. As I've never found it here. 

I don't know where you are now. 

The work itself has been hell. I was long ago shut-out from the work that mattered so much to me, the work in which I excelled. I tried to find meaning in other things - and never did. Instead, the work I found was far below my capability and I struggled against sadism, bad systems, egos, bullies, trying to survive. I couldn't seem to retain my sense of self inside such systems, and I could only suffer and hold on, battling depression and dread and fear. I tried to have children, too, when I stopped hoping you would come. But I never could. I will not try to describe this past decade. It's too painful. Too much. I've hated everything about my life. Hated everything about me. 

The saving grace was the tender love of Floriaan. And his family. And a trauma therapist who could help me try to understand the fucking wreck of my life. 

Do I resent you your career? No. I look inside and feel no resentment for that. Simply gratitude that you were able to promote and build something from that exceptional mind. I never wanted you to suffer. I never gave your name. 

But I wish that I'd been able to have the same chance. 

There are different rules for men and women. And they needed to pillory me. I was never repentant. That was my sin. And I never stopped loving you. Another sin. 

When I returned to Naples last week, I came in such profound contact with the person I had been there - and this has made me grieve for who I was, and what I've lost. I didn't look at it for so long, couldn't look behind me because it paralyzed me to see and acknowledge. 

Why do I write this to you? Why do I still now, after all these years, so badly need you to see me? To comfort me? Why do I return to the source of my poison as if you have the power to undo the past fifteen years -  as if your love might heal this wound?

Because I believe, somehow, that it still can.