Who Art Thou

It's discouraging. Even my dream life is letting me down.

Take the other night. I'm in a house near some stairs, when my ex appears. He's shorter and thinner than in real life. His bottom teeth are more crooked. And he's so uptight, he can barely say hello.

He suggests we meet another day.

I look at him incredulous. Yeah, sure, another day.

Then we try kissing, but there is nothing left. What was between us has disappeared.

The dream went on a while longer, but that was the gist of it and when I woke up, I was downright blue. In fact, all day long, I kept thinking about my ex and wondering whether....

...Love really does just vanish?

...Or is the fact that love vanishes, a sign that it wasn't love at all?

...And if the latter is true, does that mean, more often than not, all the energy and thought-time we expend on love just ends up down the tubes?

Unless, as my friend Nicole who is a therapist insists, love is personal. By which she means, if it's real for you, then it's real, regardless of whether it's reciprocal.

That would explain why someone I know can be obsessively in love with a fellow she met online, even though they've never spoken let alone ever met.

Or why a friend could pine after her true love - a married man - for twenty years, even though she sees him at best once a year.

Or I how I could go on for a good year thinking my ex-husband truly loved me, even though hello, obviously he didn't.

I suppose Nicole's view of love offers more room for optimism, but none of it is exactly cheery. Which may be why on a day like this, the best I can say about love is hopefully it's not only blind but deaf and dumb.