Lucid Dreaming

Marie,

It's funny how sometimes I can go back and read our old text message conversations and feel a little hint of that feeling I used to get talking to you. I just picture your little smirks and that devious look of yours when you try to embarrass me. Your sarcasm and wit always made me smile. I smile differently when I think about you than any other time. It's deeper somehow. I feel connected to you in some small way when I can look at those old transcripts.

It's a bit like living a dream. I can almost picture myself as I was then: so happy, so hopeful, and so full of love. The sound of your voice could make my entire body tremble with excitement. Every time we spoke I felt like I could die happy. I always knew, each time we spoke, that I was the luckiest person on earth. I felt truly blessed for the chance to be close to you in any way I could. Looking back at our banter and how deeply we cared for each other just brings those feelings back. Honestly, these days it's about the only time I feel any happiness at all. Those little trips of the mind that I take to our special place - that world we created just for us - are the only times I experience some degree of peace.

I miss you every day and think of you always. I suppose I should be grateful for having had the opportunity to know you for as long as I did. And I am. It's just so hard to imagine happiness without you now.

Maybe this is just part of the deal. Maybe everyone, at some point, is forced to live in a world where their truest source of happiness is gone. The best we can hope for is to find something that gets us close, knowing that the height of bliss is temporary and can never be restored once it is lost.

I'd like to say I'm closer to making peace with it all, but I don't know if that's true. I'm afraid my life has just been calibrated for a lower standard of happiness and I've forgotten what is really possible. Perhaps that's the best I'll do toward making peace.

My love, you are with me in my dreams. And in my dreams I would gladly dwell for eternity.