A question. An answer I didn’t want to hear.

The older I get the more I believe something is behind all of us in all of this. I’m not specifically speaking about God or Allah or what have you. Just something behind this life, our ability to conjure thoughts any time we’d like. I’ve been put through an emotional meat grinder the last few weeks. Summer, where usually everything is great and free and flowing. I can’t go into it all now cause it’s 7:13am EST. You don’t come up in my daily thought process. Why would you? It’s been forever since I last saw you. It’s been a minute since we spoke. There is no reason to. Regardless of the good; there are boundaries and respect. 

I am waking up from a slumber of really not a lot of dreaming but it all became so vivid towards the end. Scary vivid. I can’t remember ever speaking in a dream. I really cannot and I’ve had some bangers. I haven’t seen you in forever but it was the you I last saw that I was looking at. Face to face. I asked you a question that, well, is always relevant regardless of time. A question where the answer can be both good and bad given the circumstances. The funnier thing is we were in some city. A city we never visited. I can see the room and I can see big windows looking out to some architecture only a city would hold. I laughed cause I just thought, that would be the last place I would want to be. Then again, there are places that you would go with that special person where it was never about the place, but all about the person you were with. That much I know. 

I used to travel a lot. I don’t miss those days. I don’t miss being away. Now I am not away, but yet, I have been “gone”. Checked out of life on this other path. People back home never realized while they were putting in 40, I was usually doing 60 or sometimes 80 with all my travel time. The investment of my time was the worst thing I could’ve chosen. It’s the only investment you usually can’t get back. While I have been “gone” to torment and the chaos around me, I have learned what I did wrong and part of me regrets that deeply. I thought, this is what I invested in? This is the trash I kept? Blah. Granted I survived but man I paid that ultimate price. You. Of course, do I think it would’ve worked out regardless? Who knows? A guy can dream. 

What did I ask you in the dream? I asked you if you still loved me. You started to cry, nodded yes and put your head down. I shook my head and nodded and put my head down. 

The dream ended. I woke up smiling. 

I usually always woke up smiling next to you.