"One day you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest, most awful truth you will ever come to find is they are not always with whom we spend our lives."
There have been two people in my 34 years on this planet that have started this type of fire in me. And, true to quote, I have not been destined to spend my life with either of them. The first one was taken far too soon, well before either of us really knew what spending a lifetime with someone truly entailed. But the other one...in theory, I guess I could try and stoke that fire and see what comes of it. However, both my heart and my mind tell me to slow my roll. Do I care about her? Always. I'm not the type to stop caring about someone unless given a damn good reason to. But you can't put the genie back in the bottle, you know? Everything that's happened has put so much distance between us, which is ironic when you remember part of the reason we failed in the first place was because of a different kind of distance. Also, we were only affecting ourselves back when we were off and on, whereas now we both have children. The universe seemed to be steering us into separate lives. And then we ran into each other for the first time in awhile, and the week of her birthday, no less. It stuck in my brain for a few days, and apparently also in my subconscious. I had a dream, a very vivid one, about her. She was designing some kind of store window and I was wandering around a mall with her sister, who I never really got along with. We didn't speak much, but we kept stopping by the store window to give feedback. The first two stops, we didn't love what she'd done with the place, so we went mall walking again. The third time, we complimented her on her work and then all sat down on this big couch, with me in between the two of them. We were each reading magazines or something and then I woke up. What I remember most about the dream was how I felt. There was this overwhelming feeling of adoring her. And she seemed to have no idea at all.
I spent a full day with that dream on mind and debated whether I should try and call her, before ultimately deciding not to. I realized the dream wasn't trying to push me towards her, it was trying to knock some sense into me. For years, I felt the way I did in that dream - totally enamored with her while she was in and out of the relationship for various reasons. She loved me, I know she did, but timing is everything and ours was off. I think this dream was the universe reminding me of how well things turned out the first time. And we shouldn't cross that bridge again. It helps that, while I still consider her one of those who started a fire in me and, on some level, it still burns, it doesn't burn as brightly as it once did. It's muted, in a way. And that's how it was meant to turn out. It's funny though. If I could go back to the day we met, even knowing all that happened in the years after, I wouldn't change a thing. I think we both loved each other the best we could at that time. And we're both destined to love other people now.
