Guest Post by Jane
Dear Dick,
I dreamed of you again last night. To this day, you are a ghost who haunts all four chambers of my heart.
You came to me sudden and fierce, giving me no warning that your ghost would conjure an appearance again. I was blissfully unaware, in that deep, dark place of dreamless sleep when the images abruptly formed, an alternate reality took shape.
It was so instant and brutal, this feeling of you, that now I can't help but wonder if you were dreaming of me too. Daylight and its companion, Common Sense, tell me the idea is nothing but a remnant of the wish to still have a connection with you. Yet in this moment of weakness, I want to believe.
I stood in a store, shopping with a friend, and as my purchases were rung up, I thought I heard your voice whisper in my ear.
Your voice - a sound that is still etched in my memory after all these years, and is one of the few sounds that can cause my heart to flutter. I'll have you know those few sounds are limited to my boys' voices and, for some odd reason, the twinkling of Harry Potter theme music. And possibly the winning lotto numbers on the TV, but I've yet to have that one happen.
At first, I think my ears are playing a trick on me and I begin to dismiss your voice as imagination. But then I look up and to my left.
And there you are.
You are so real to me that I swear I catch a trace of your old cologne. One by Ralph Lauren, wasn't it?
My breath is stolen from my body. My chest is swiftly slashed open, exposing the deep wound you left in my heart, the one that I've been trying for years to heal.
I see you as I always see you. Time hasn't frozen for either of us, but it certainly hasn't moved at the same pace as the years that separate us. You still have that beautiful head of salt and pepper hair and you're dressed in a black sweater and tan slacks, still pulling off that classic and elegant style I always admired.
Without thought, I'm overwhelmed with the desire to run and throw myself into your arms and feel you once again. God, I want to touch you just once more.
But I don't.
You're with a group of four or so people, talking with them, and this dream becomes something like a dream within a dream. Or perhaps a cliché with in cliché. You know the one I speak of. The one where the guy you have a tremendous crush on is surrounded by a passel of equally elite friends and always, ALWAYS, the guy is making a wonderful witty and funny comment at the exact moment you walk by, and everyone laughs and circles in closer, hoping to capture some of his coolness for their very own, but blocking out your mediocre presence.
THAT scene.
But I? I'm not exactly standing at the register with white cotton granny briefs and an 18-hour bra in my hands either. You've also caught me in a moment of sophisticated humor with my friend, laughing at some completely awesome remark I just made, which is why I wasn't sure I heard your voice whispering my name. There I am, looking just as classic and elegant as you, and the shallow thought of thank god he caught me on a skinny AND good hair day runs through my mind.
This time, I know I'm worthy of your attention. I've grown and matured, and become something. I don't know what exactly, but something more than before. This time, I deserve decency from you.
As if your decency, or the lack thereof, ever had anything to do with me?
I know you know I'm there and I'm aware of you too, so I keep staring at you as you talk, hoping the force of my stare causes you to forget your friends and acknowledge my existence again.
Slyly, you glance over to me, not wanting your friends to see you look. But you look nonetheless. I give you a tentative smile, hoping to open the door to some type of contact with you, any kind at all. The yearning to be close to you again is so powerful that I'm brought to the brink of tears in my sleep.
But you quickly look away from my eyes and back to your friends, ignoring my tentative smile.
The door slams shut and I fall into the painful abyss of my own heart once again.
As with every dream I have of you, the pain is so utterly real that I force myself to wake up in order to escape it. The only other dreams that do this to me are the ones where my children are dead or dying. That's the strength of your haunting.
And so I wake.
I lie in the soft light of dawn, still feeling the tendrils of longing wrapped around my heart, still holding onto the misty form of your ghost. But soon, so very soon, daylight rushes reality in, and the chasm in my chest is laid bare, exposed to the harsh light of the full morning sun.
I feel the loss of your love all over again.
After these dreams, I've tried to fill this chasm with thoughts of anger, hate and imaginary plots of revenge. I've waited for years for those thoughts to solidify and fill the breach in me so these dreams would stop. But instead, those feelings have only eroded the foundation even deeper, grinding the pain into the dark places of my heart I'm too afraid to visit.
I want your ghost to be gone from me.
But yet I don't. It's all I have left of you.
Hauntedly yours,
Jane
If you are new to the story of Dick and Jane, or have simply forgotten the first part of the series in this story because it was sooo long ago and the author is a lazy ass full of good but unfulfilled intentions, then click here for the first installment.
Jane is an anonymous guest blogger.
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