Last night I dreamt of that lover from a past life, the only one who will ever know me as wife. This was the second dream in as many weeks. What does his appearance mean?
I chose him when I was 17 and married him at 21 yet I cannot remember how his skin smelled, lips felt, or the sound of his laughter. Parts of our life together are as fresh in my memory as yesterday, but he has faded. And, I didn't even try to remember.
No, this isn't lingering regret.
There is a piece of me that still craves normalcy. Naturally, he represents that; the time I tried to be good and do things as I should. I distorted his vision, and he saw all the markings of a future life. I contorted my being and forced myself into a lie. I needed normal. I wanted to be normal. He was my normal.
Normal equaled functional. It meant church on Sundays and a home where dad, mom, and children shared a last name. Normal demanded I swallow my passions, hide my natures, and parade in my skin as somebody else. For normal, I sat on closet floors and cried alone; I knelt at alters and prayed to atone; and I hated everyone who loved her.
But, here I am again romanticizing a life that fit me like noose. He is my mental picture of normal because a teenage girl willed him to be so. Fourteen years later, his apparition reminds the woman of what she secretly believed for years. "Good girls love good guys and live good lives. And, if it's all pretend, at least it's a good lie."
