Dream A Little Dream of Me

Have you ever missed someone in your dreams? Like you haven't seen them in the flesh for a very long time and there they are, right in front of you, so real you can feel your skin dented under the touch of their fingers. And some time at the very end you’d figure out that it is just a mind game, and very soon the illusion will end. And dreams like these hurt so much like they’re real. And doubly painful when you're dreaming your past memories.

It doesn’t even have to be a particularly special memory, just you and them doing the mundanest things in places so familiar, but places you can’t ever go back because space, sometimes moves forward like time does. You can never go back to your old house because it’s no longer yours or it’s simply not there anymore. That shared bedroom you cleaned together on Sundays. The mamak you met after a hard day at work. They cannot be yours again. Even if you try your best you can tell it’s not the same thing. The sound, the air, the light, the smell, and worst of all, your conscience will betray your memories. You’d know the whole time it is just your poor attempt to relive things. That it ended exactly the same moment it began.

And not just time and space, it’s people too. People change, and on God they do. The anticipation of meeting old friends is the only moment you feel true joy.  Because people change. When you finally meet them, you’d find yourself looking for the youthfulness, the not-a-care-for-the-world-ness, catchphrases you said in sync, the inside jokes so inside you laughed at the absurdity of how unfunny they are to others. That you used to be their world and they yours. That is no more. Maybe that’s why we’re so annoyed by that group of boys laughing at the next table. Not because we want some peace eating alone after a tiring week. But because it reminded us of us, of people we will never can ever be.

Now meeting old friends is not just a fun, whatever kind of thing. There’s an air of seriousness. Decorum to follow (especially when they bring along their family). After all, you are no more than just one weekend in their entire adult life, at best. Like, is a half-day outing even one weekend? You matter none, like if the hangout gets postponed, in which it usually did, it wouldn’t change a thing about their life, and tragically yours too. And it’s not like you can just relive your youth full speed from the get-go. Because your life and their life are so terribly different you have to have the surfacy probing questions about your work, your life, your love life, none of which needs to be asked if we’re just, us. And the way people tiptoe around asking them because one slight choice of word someone will be offended. Beats me if you ask me why. Because I’m sure it can offend me too.

I don’t know. It’s not like I don’t get that life has to go in a certain direction at a certain time.  That at one point the little bird has to leave the nest, or whatever poetic analogy to this. I get it. I might not know the point of telling things that are obvious, rummaging over things I have no control over. But right now I’m glad I did. Don’t be confused, I’m not happy about it but glad I am.

Only with introspection into hardly important matters like this, I can mindlessly navigate them when I’m forced to face them again. 

And only this way I can tangibly tell our life is inevitably temporary, cruel, and just about as real as the dreams I had of you.