dream a little dream of me

happy thirtieth birthday! since this is a milestone birthday i thought i'd take a moment to express extra appreciation for you beyond the classic two words. you were a significant part of my early twenties and i'm grateful to have met you and for the love and memories we shared.

when i struggle with loneliness here in dc, which is admittedly a lot, i think back on the sense of community i had when i lived in tuscaloosa. it's something i haven't been able to recreate anywhere i've lived since, and i miss it, and in those moments i miss you too.

i know we don't really talk anymore, but i meant it all those years ago when i said i'll always love you and be there for you. i don't mention that to try and pressure us into becoming close again or anything. i just want you to know that if you ever need someone to talk to, i've still got you.

i really hope our paths cross in person again someday. i'd love to catch up on everything that has happened in the past five years since i last saw you. the world has evolved so much since then, and we both certainly have evolved as people too. still, i like to think we would pick up where we left off.

last night i remembered that when we dated (the first time around), you told me about a car seat headrest song that reminded you of me, but i couldn't remember which one. to jog my memory, i decided to see if i recorded it somewhere in my "hake" folder on my external hard drive. it was there, and it was "sober to death" in case you were wondering.

you may or may not be surprised to know that i have a hake folder, with screenshots and pictures spanning our relationship. i also copy-pasted all my phone notes about you into a word doc. part of it is a list of memories i wrote down right before and right after we broke up of little memories that i didn't want to forget. most of them were things i had completely forgotten until i reopened the document.

one of the tidbits i wrote down was that you told me you thought i was the love of your life, but then the next day told me you think that's only something you can know in retrospect. when i get into these nostalgic moods about our relationship, i would be willing to pay a million dollars and be in debt for the rest of my life to find out whether you still think i am the love of your life in retrospect.

i haven't looked at my hake folder in years, because it makes me a bit sad to peruse. considering the way we ended, it's hard to believe that you said and did those things i meticulously noted and meant them. from saying you loved me more than anything to suddenly losing all romantic feelings for me, from talking every day to not having talked in almost a year. honestly, it feels like the person you were the first time we dated and the person you were when you left are two different people.

it's frustrating that i still sometimes feel stuck trying to move on from our relationship, but i feel like i have made significant progress. i have had these nostalgic moods about our relationship much less often in the past year. i have accepted that we are never going to be close again. i am gentle with the part of me that still loves you and grieves not being in your life anymore.

i still wonder if i'm ever going to see you again and still hope that i will, but i have accepted that probably isn't going to happen either. i'm tempted to text you happy birthday again this year, since we are both turning 30 after all. last year i did but you didn't return the favor, and i realized i should probably keep my distance in order not to awaken the part of me that i just mentioned.

i realize having enough thoughts and feelings for a letter this long probably makes it seem like i'm waiting for my partner and i to break up so we can try to reconcile or something. that's not what i am saying. i believe my partner is one of my soulmates, and i am happy with them and grateful for the way they treat me. it's just that you were one of my soulmates too, and like i said in my last letter, losing you was traumatic.

i think it's funny that i'm writing this post at 5am on new years eve. ending 2025 like i spent several days of it: writing a tumblr post that no one else but me will read before the sun comes up because i can't sleep. i don't know how to describe 2025. it had quite a few challenges, particularly for my emotional health, but it wasn't traumatic by any means.

i guess the most life changing aspect of this year was that i resumed therapy in february. i processed my trauma from nick and jh and the fund some more, and processed my trauma from the sorority for the first time. i am out of therapy right now and hoping to find another therapist since i got a new job (will get to that shortly), but i feel like i made so much progress in just 10 months. my goals with my next one will be to keep a pulse on my traumas for when they come up and also hopefully learn some coping skills to manage my anxiety, which has been debilitating at several points this year.

right after i made my new year's post last year i made a separate post to vent about my trauma recovery process regarding jh and nick so i thought i'd give a quick update on where i'm at with that. i ended up texting nick in february and we had a short cordial conversation, but a few weeks later i noticed he blocked me. jh and i still text occasionally but i have concluded that we will ever be as close as we once were and reaching out to him only hurts me since it's a reminder of that. youtube music made a heat map of all the times i listened to better man throughout the year and i can tell therapy worked because the map got lighter and lighter as the year progressed. i still have really vivid dreams about them but thanks to therapy, they don't pull me into days-long regressive states of missing them like they used to.

things with oomf are still going well! i still get all the cuddles and kisses and hugs that i crave and give plenty of them back. moving in together continues to bring us closer and i cannot even imagine how i got through all those years of long distance. living together has also allowed us to have more serious conversations and work through things that we didn't always have time or space to talk about when we lived in completely different cities. there was a point this year where i was feeling scared and rushed into marriage due to scotus, but i have since calmed down from that. we want to get married eventually and we'll just go over the border to maryland where it'll be legal no matter what.

this time last year i had only had my private practice child therapist job for a couple months. well, in october the practice closed down and i had to find a new job within 4 weeks. in between that time i would say i was severely underemployed, with only a few sessions a week, and the leadership at that job was quite toxic, but i loved getting to know my coworkers. my new job is entirely remote and i work almost exclusively with adults, which has been an exciting challenge. i am having trouble with not ruminating when i make a mistake in session, so i am hoping by the end of the year i still have the same job this time and i feel more confident in my abilities with it.

it turns out i didn't make a reflection post 10 years ago because i was still in the midst of my breakup with nick. 5 years ago i highlighted improving my mental health through therapy, finishing a year of grad school during a pandemic, the devastating grief i experienced when the clinic was sold, and confessing my feelings to my co-intern who i had a huge crush on. it was an eventful year! i ended it with a note of optimism that the rest of the decade would go better than that year did, and i can say past helmi was at least right about that, even if it hasn't always been smooth sailing.

i have been doing a lot better in terms of not being triggered by you. you blocking me turned out to be a blessing in disguise. obviously you can't just get the ick and turn off ptsd, but it forced me to set a boundary around my thoughts around you because you set it first.

but then last night i had another vivid dream about you and i hanging out, and it was actually pleasant. some unrealistic things happened, as dreams tend to go, but our conversations felt real. it reminded me of the last time we texted and the last time i saw you in person: no hard feelings, just catching up with a friend. in my dreams you are thriving and i like to think you are in real life too.

i wasn't filled with dread or fear when i woke up, just curiosity and a weird sense of comfort. it made me miss you and the truly good times, as well as the good times in between the horribly wrong ones. it made me wonder whether there was ever a chance of us still being friends if only i had been more careful in that fragile state of our relationship post-breakup. you were the first to teach me i really should take a break from talking to an ex until feelings calm down.

my therapist and i have been working on containing my thoughts around you. when you pop in my mind, i imagine a giant metal wall between me and those thoughts, with a little window that i can look into to keep myself safe from the pain that some of those memories cause me. i can peer into the window and watch the memories without becoming consumed by them.

i'm not sure how you showing up in my dreams is supposed to fit into that framework, and it hasn't happened since we came up with it. i'm not sure if writing you these letters is frowned upon or not either. but how i feel in these moments reminds me of how i felt when we first broke up: the one person i want to talk to about my feelings is you and there are a million reasons why i shouldn't.