She was the Right Person for Me
Originally written and posted April 10, 2012, edited in 2024
Years pass, and still I dream about her – dreams more real than most I have. Dreams of being in her presence, just nearby, not too close. She allows me there, her kindness shining so bright. But you cannot stare at the sun for long. The vividness of the dreams are so strong. Music drifts through as I watch moments of simple pleasures. A glance, a kind word; emotion packed into a Christmas ornament, the sweetness of her smile. I try to tell her that I am okay, but that I still feel. I feel. In those moments, in my dreams, I have more feeling, more emotion than I have at any other time. So often, I feel dead inside, dull and unmoved. Yet in those moments, in those dreams, the feelings are so deep, I weep and find myself waking, physically moved.
As I wake, feelings both warm and sad sag around me like a heavy quilt, and I remember the counterweight that pulls down on my soul. I recall with fondness the tea cups and doilies, the potpourri and polish, and I think of “Frasier”. Yes, “Frasier” the television show, and Martin, the father – a duct-taped Laz-Y-Boy versus an elegant Armani. But that was just a show, and fathers and sons are so different.
She was the right person for me.
I understand London and Hamburg, and La Ville-Lumière. And there she is again in my life, because I imagined the “Champs-Élysées”, but I would need her help to spell it right – I haven’t the skill to find it in a dictionary. I pray that someday she will dine with the Queen, or a Prince, or the President, and she can savor all the flavors of the accouterments and circumstance. For me, the proper fork is tricky. Dining straight from the box the meal came in is satisfying enough. You can hold the sun in your gaze for too long, and when you do, you blind yourself, and you diminish the sun’s brilliance and wonder.
I was a cowboy with a tea cup. One will destroy the other. Her beaming personality and light called me to her worlds. But as I tried to don that suit, I felt itchy and fettered, and my saddle slipped away. My dirt dulled the brightness of her porcelain, and cracked the firmness of her reach, and it should never have been so. She deserves all the splendor and wonder she seeks. I am content in jeans, and it seems I am unable, and unwilling, to elevate beyond them.
I wake, physically weeping from the dreams, feelings so deep from only a remembered smile. Her real life warmth and bubble are so strong that she is still able to send me a kindness, even if just in make-believe. She bettered me, and does to this day. She was the right person for me. But I was not the right person for her.
(2025/09/27 There is a direct follow up to this here: "The Right Person, the Hermit, and Boundaries around Emptiness". The Right Person, Visit 2 (A Diary) I Messed Up - Again No Hope)
