Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Live Long and Cover Up

I had a strange dream just the other night. I was back in Ohio, where I worked summer stock. It didn't look like the Ohio I knew, but I could tell that it was. At one point I saw a whole group of people, but I only recognized two people. One person was this girl I was somewhat dating. I don't think I could really call it dating, though, at least not within the confides of New Philadelphia. Her hair was longer than I remember, and she was wearing a red dress. The weird thing about the dress was that it was hiked up in the front, revealing, well...

All I could think was "Put that away!" I didn't want to see what I was seeing, in more ways than one.

I am pretty sure I knew why I had this dream, or at least the elements that caused the dream. The dress came from Leonard Nimoy's (yes, Spock) photography. I came across it recently, and he has a series called Secret Selves. One picture includes an artist painting a budding flower, and the model for the flower is in fact a woman lifting her dress. Who knew Vulcans could be that artistic?

As for the girl, I can thank Facebook for that one. I was checking out some travel photos posted by an old Ohio buddy, and there she was in his group of Facebook friends. She was much different than I remember. Her hair was actually shorter, formed around her face. She looked older, sort of plain. Her last name was also different, which leads me to believe she got married, or is running from a drug cartel.

One thing I need to clarify right away is that I am very much over this person in the loving sense. I have been for a long time now, Jamie being the greatest factor in all of that. To say I have no remaining feelings would be misleading. The fact of the matter is that I have very, very negative feelings towards this person. What could have still been a great friendship ended very poorly. And after trying to figure things out for myself in the time that followed, I became very angry. At first, I was walking on egg shells because I didn't want things to be awkward. At the same time, I wanted to keep in touch because our friendship meant a lot. Things became very misunderstood on both ends, but I could only focus on the negative after all was said and done. Things could have worked out, but at the time I thought I caused too much damage and couldn't talk to her. But I later on, I realized that her anger, or what could have been seen as anger, came out of ignorance. I had all this guilt because she couldn't trust me to stick with what we agreed on. In this ignorance, she treated me like a plague. Spalding Gray might have called it "Walking Dutch Elm Disease".

I guess the thing is that I thought I would be angrier. I would very seldom go on an Ohio friend's Facebook because I'd be afraid I'd come across her picture, which would tie this huge knot in my stomach. I went out of my way to avoid this person. On the other hand, I wondered what would happen if we met again. I saw myself yelling at her, wanting her to feel horrible. But the reality was that I didn't care. I didn't care that I saw her picture. I didn't care that she was married (young at that). And I almost didn't know what I saw in the first place.

I'm not trying to put this person down. I hope she is happy and living well. I think at this point I can just stop being angry, or I hope I can stop. Call it growing up if you want, or maybe just call it a bad dream. Maybe I'll just pin this one on Facebook and Spock.

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