It’s been
said that if you dream about someone it means that that person has been
thinking about you. What exactly does
that mean or how it could possibly be quantified? It’s a nice notion, isn’t it? Even after so many years Robert still thought
of her often and she occasionally starred in his dreams. He’d always hoped that she thought of him,
because the notion made him feel important.
There she
was. She sat towards the far end of the
bench with her legs angled so that her heels were touching the creaky hardwood
floor with her toes pointed upward. She was
mostly a silhouette from Robert’s angle.
She was backlit by the bright white sky lighting the room from the big
window on the opposite side of her. The
light made him think 1980s music video: "Turn around Bright Eyes." She
was looking up at him without fully turning her head. Despite the backlighting,
he could clearly see her face. Robert
had always wondered if he ever ran into her in person, would he recognize her. It had been over thirty years and he hadn’t
actually formally met her back then, yet he had never forgotten her.
“Did you find her?” She asked him. Her voice both startled and comforted him. Her eyes connecting with his was almost more than he could handle. He could feel his body jolt just with electricity before a rush of heat blasted through it.
“I thought that
search ended years ago,” Robert turned his head to see his longtime friend
Brian to his right respond for him. “Can
you help him find her?” Brian re-directed, turning his forearms like a hoops
referee calling travelling urging this sequence to move along.
Robert had found her and she was directly in
front of him. He studied her face. She was as stunning as he remembered. He could feel his heart pounding in his
chest, and even more so in his temples and down both sides of his neck. He could not stop looking at her like he was
trying to identify her as a suspect in a police lineup. His jaw dangled as if held in place by a Slinky. He was worried that he might pass out.
“I have found her,” he blurted emphasizing his point.
Considering the momentous amount of time that he had dreamt and imagined being close to her – at least a part of her life - he had never really known or figured out what he might say if it actually happened. He knew long ago that it would never happen, so apparently he decided that he didn’t need a contingency plan. There was that one time he thought he had seen her a couple of years after the brief time they had been at the same school, but that was so long ago that he finally stopped thinking that he might ever run across her in a public place.
It was that one time when he was driving home over on the east side of town. It was soon after sunrise. A baked out late summer dawn. He swore he had seen her jogging the opposite way on the sidewalk adjacent to the park fence. She was jogging the opposite direction, so Robert slammed on the brake and cranked the steering wheel sharply and executed a 70s cop show spinout. Actually, that’s how he’d imagined it. Instead he drove carefully to the next block, turned his car around safely and drove back toward the park. No one was in sight. He had been awake for several days straight and had just spent the previous night at a 24 hour bowling alley with some friends – bowling and drinking, or drinking and bowling. He was fully aware of the creepiness of the scenario, and chose to drive away, and ponder if he had actually seen her, or if she had been a figment of his imagination. She was never far from his thoughts.
When they shared a campus, he had wanted to say something – anything – but he did not. That was the problem. Robert never said anything to her and that seemed to be his decision, which is why he knew he wouldn’t be a part of her life. They shared the same campus for a few months and he would see her around every so often. He had never been drawn to anyone like that before. Yes, he thought she was incredibly pretty, but it was more than that. For some reason, he felt like she understood him in a way that he had he never felt before. He did not know what it was. Her friendly disposition made her seem like an accepting and understanding person, but he didn’t know anything about her.
Robert didn’t take care of himself, or particularly like himself. Yet he wanted to be there for her in any way possible. He felt it in every fiber of his being. This was all new to him and he didn’t know how to reconcile his thoughts and feelings. For the first time in his life, he had the desire to allow his guardrails to lower, or so he kept telling himself this. It couldn’t have been true, because he did none of these things. He couldn’t even muster a passing “hello.” His inaction being that much more frustrating because he realized that he wasn’t a draw due of his good looks or magnetic personality. Robert needed good timing and a lot of luck.
Aside from occasionally falling into lonely teen angst stretches, he had always wanted to spend most of his time alone. He didn’t think he could ever relate to anyone, so he knew that, though this exciting and surprising new presence was in his periphery, he would likely not try to meet her – a decision Robert had always regretted.
This was the crux of why she had haunted him for so many years after their first encounter. He had made no effort. Here she was, a dream he didn’t know he had had come true, and yet he was content to be thrilled by a distant passing sighting of her once every couple of days. He did not make an effort to try to actually get to know her. What could’ve been the reason? Looking back, his inaction feels an insane decision. Sure he was terrified of being cruelly rejected and having that image he had of her burst like an overfilled water balloon, along with his strangely erratic pride. He was also terrified of making a tragic fool of himself in all the worst possible ways – a creepy, overbearing, neurotic, desperate way, which all were incredibly accurate – except he never thought of himself as creepy, but that’s not for him to judge.
Robert had once been told that he might be afraid of success. This had been a revelation for him. Was he afraid of success? Despite not being very happy with his lot in life, he was indeed afraid to take risks and threaten the protective isolative shield he had worked so many years to build. In retrospect, he had noticed patterns, where almost any chances he had ever had of possibly accomplishing things he had worked to achieve, he would sabotage, or turn against them.
The more he
thought about it, the more he began to realize his history of avoidance and
obstruction. Robert remembered when he
was offered a great job as an assistant manager for the campus station, but
turned it down, because they didn’t hire his friend and dorm mate along with
him. He remembered missing the final
interview for a scholarship to that engineering trade school he was about to
attend and was very expensive. After
learning he was only competing with one other, he felt excited, but still
assured that he would miss the final interview. There was also that sound engineer apprenticeship
he skirted at the Bad Animals
recording studio in Seattle. There was even
that time in school when a very pretty girl he didn’t recognize who pulled him
aside one day and asked him out and he scurried away like the frightened cat
from those weird French skunk cartoons (Pepé Le Pew).
There were several more examples that raced through his thoughts like
projectiles from a missile battery firework.
What the hell was he doing? He
had always been filled with regrets - not from his failures, but from the
things he gave up on, or when he didn’t try.
The problem was, he did not know why he so often had chosen to turn away from opportunity. There was that internship he had taken about fifteen years prior, where he was given most of each week’s new music releases all in exchange for a simple paragraph write up about each one. It seemed like a long time dream come true, yet he remembered how quickly he began to hate music and writing – his two main passions. Instead he chose to stick with his normal job, full of frustrating personalities, insane tasks with even more absurd deadlines. Yet he clung to that job with an unbreakable grip, despite having little interest.
“Are you going to ask me?” Her brown eyes focused intently on Robert’s. He dropped his head. Feeling overwhelmed.
Robert had never spoken to her. He had had his chances all those years ago. She had spoken to him a couple of times with a passing greeting in her sing-song voice, but he could never quite form the words and now, over thirty years later she is still haunting his dreams. He is not so full of himself to believe that he could’ve won her heart back then and in reality he is pretty certain that he wouldn’t have, nor had he been ready, or would ever be ready to do so.
Aside from the most extreme examples, he felt that he was living a normal life. When opportunities had risen, he would find a way to at least try for them. In his work life he generally found himself able to raise his stock enough to earn and accept promotions. In addition, he had found himself actively dating and continuing his search for a long term loving romantic relationship. However, he was not passionate about these things. He did them because he felt like he was supposed to do them. He felt no intense interest with his career, so none of the responsibilities he accumulated felt important. His biggest goal with work was to not have to bring it home. His attempts at relationships went similarly. He often felt uncomfortable and wasn’t sure if he wanted a relationship. He was not fully present with them, because he wasn’t with her, or his invented image of her. It was no secret why none of his relationship efforts lasted long.
All he wanted to know now is how to fix this. What is it that is often said: knowing is
half the battle? It’s true that
recognizing his tendencies as a problem could help him avoid these issues in the
dwindling future. It was clear that this
problem of sabotaging potential success was deep-seeded.
“My life sucks!
Boohoo! I’m Bobby and I’m great
at everything and don’t try to be!” Brian shouted as he pretended to rub his
eyes with his fists.
“That’s not what I me-,” Robert stopped himself. “I do not assume any of those things were
destined to work out, but why was I hell bent on taking myself out of or never
entering the running?”
“Blah Blah Blah!”
Brian continued unmoved by Robert’s clarification.
Ignoring Brian, Robert focused his eyes on her sitting on that
worn church-style pew directly in front of him.
The dusty old stained wood stench overwhelmed his senses once he took in
a rapid deep breath. She returned his
stare with a slight smirk on her lips. A
flash of heat rose from his gut straight up into his face. He began to feel unsteady and placed his hand
on the back of the bench for balance.
“What’s wrong with you?!” Brian shouted at him with what
sounded like legitimate rage. He turned
his head to see a fading silhouette of Brian lurking in the shadows of the
room.
“It’s more than that isn’t it?” her voice recaptured all of his attention. “It’s not so much that you’ve been afraid of success,” she paused keeping this important wisdom from him for at least a few more seconds. “Why didn’t you at least try to get to know me? Are you afraid of the responsibility that success might bring?” She closed her eyes and bowed her head, as if she were praying. “It’s easier for you to always have me as a ‘what could’ve been,’ instead of ‘someone you blew it with.’ As it is now, I will always be perfect in your head,” she grinned and closed her eyes as she let him absorb these words.
“This dumpy chick is right, you know?” Brian interjected.
“Why are you here?!”
“You love beating yourself up.”
She looked back up at him and added, “You don’t want the responsibility that might bring success, or that success might bring. However you define success.”
He wasn’t sure if he knew how he defined success, but he was pretty sure that it had negative connotations to him.
Next thing he knew, he could feel his pulse pounding in his
temples. He was lying on his back
gasping for air. She had taken over his
dreams yet again.
“Do other people have dreams like this,” Robert wondered in
a quiet mumble
He also wondered if these dreams had continued to recur
every few months for years, because he had a masochistic need to continuously
poke his most painful emotional bruises so that they would never heal. Or maybe it’s a realization that he has
avoided achieving all of the biggest goals he had ever set for himself and now
it’s too late. Unlike the previous
dreams of him encountering her in the present time that he had experienced,
this one was not full of embarrassment.
This felt different. He did not
wake up feeling defeated.