I didn’t really intend to bring up this subject when I set out to write the post but it feels like necessary preface, and it’s something that deserves to get explained at some point, if I’m going to lay out my personal biz in the way I’ve been doing.  I love my husband a lot, but it isn’t that ardent romantic love you feel when you are young and foolish.  By the time I met him, I’d burned out on that concept.

I’d take a bullet for him and likely vice versa, so it’s like, who can get in front of that thang first?  On the other hand, I’d take a bullet for a stranger and he’d probably take one for a dragonfly.  We do love each other.  But there’s a bloody edge to the way humans love when we’re new, something more dire and deep.  Worse, I think it’s permanent.  Didn’t Dante turn his high school crush into an extra special angel in the Divine Comedy?  Even tho he had been married to someone else for ages?  I wouldn’t be so crass, but I understand why he did that.

This really sucks for my dude because he has never been involved in those kind of feelings, feeling them or having them felt about him, which ain’t good for your self image.  But in fairness to me, we are equally mild about each other.  It’s a love that takes care of business, doesn’t mess around, gives us something essential like vitamins, but it’s not desperate heart-throbbing and sobbing, falling to your knees and howling at the wind styled love.

Is it important to experience that “something special” level of passion?  Romance stories say yes.  I say no.  It sets you up for disaster.  Hell, most of the people who feel something like that should never be allowed to lay a finger on their intended.  You know what I mean?  Just because you feel like that doesn’t mean it’s going to be reciprocated.  When I did, it wasn’t.

And if it is reciprocated and the big passionate romance is realized, what happens when something goes wrong?  You get those situations where a person dies within three months of their spouse.  It’s unnecessary sorrow and pain.  Some amount of sorrow is well and good, but that shit should not lay you in the ground.

So I loved like a maniac and had my feelings burned out, once upon a time, and now it’s gone.  Good for everyone involved.  One of the more annoying things about that intensity is that the feelings for the individuals never really seem to go away.  I still have this bullshit-ass romantic feeling about a few people I haven’t seen in decades.  Boo!

I had a dream last night that my husband had given me permission to go hang out with one of these people I had loved.  IRL this would be a bad idea because those romantic feelings are such that judgment could be impaired.  I might do infidelity I’d never do under other circumstances.  As it happened, in this dream I did not, because I walked through the events in a dispassionate daze, like I was as sleepy in the dream as I would have been were I awake.

We looked younger in the dream than we do in real life, but mi amor had some kind of degenerative condition of his teeth and of the bones in his feet that made him take extra care with what he ate and how he walked.  He was living with his family, despite being an adult, presumably due to hard times.

Aside from meeting one of his cousins in junior high, I’ve never met his family or seen where they live, but I knew it was rural.  In my head this turned into a log cabin lodge, very spacious in the common areas but cramped in rooms.  The stairs were drawers for extra storage but could be left pushed in or pulled out in ways that made the distance unpredictable and a little dangerous.

The place was a mess, hoarder style, and the other family members were all mild-mannered rednecks – adults involved in chores and little boys running amok.  There was a very fat lady wearing nothing but lingerie, trying to relax on the couch, and say something about her philosophy.  I was open to the lesson but couldn’t understand the words.

Upstairs I was in his room.  We avoided saying anything earnest and dangerous with each other.  Seemed like we were just going to pass again, ships in the night.  Then I noticed every surface in the room had silverfish and maggots wriggling across them.  Not coated in the things, like maybe a density of one per four square inches.

This was not as disgusting to me as it would be in real life, but I did insist we go somewhere else to hang out.  Down the dangerous stairs we went, careful with his feet, past scampering boys and philosophers and rednecks, into that dark place where your alarm clock goes off and puts you to work.

I don’t think there was anything truly interesting in this dream, but felt the need to write it out.  Probably a sense of significance derived from that old flame.  If the alarm hadn’t gone off, would I have cheated on my husband in my sleep?  In my heart?

I do not know, but it reinforced for me the sense that should the opportunity arise to get in touch with this man again in real life, I should not.  Fortunately, that will not happen.

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