The Men in the Middle

I’m lying awake at 11:30 at night having awaken from the strangest dream. I realize dreams call up all sorts of memories from the past. In fact, your earliest dreams often come from childhood, but you can’t recall them when you wake up in the morning. This one I remember vividly because it starred a friend of mine from college. I hadn’t thought of him in a long time, but yet there he was. And when I woke up, I missed him and I wished I could return back to the dream.

You see, I had a crush on this boy back in the day. Unfortunately, he was one of those “men in the middle”, the ones you crush on when you are in the midst of a relationship or just getting out of one. The ones nothing ever becomes of. At the time, I was dealing with one of the most horrendous relationship crises of my life and only imagined that him and I could ever be together. It didn’t help that he was always talking about liking this gorgeous desk worker that I couldn’t hold a candle against. We were great friends….and then we weren’t and I moved to Texas and he moved to wherever.

Of course, history never really goes away, as I’m learning. It just regroups, waiting for the perfect time to surface. See, when it comes to this sort of history, randomness is key. So when I received an instant message from him a year later, it was just perfect that he chose that moment to tell me he had a crush on me at the same time I did. It’s the sort of thing you laugh off, find ironic and push aside.

But that’s the thing isn’t it? He got pushed aside in the first place…and he kept getting pushed until he arrived in my dream…nearly three years after we last spoke. And it’s enough for me to wonder…does he think about me to sometimes? And the what ifs? begin.

The mind is so curious sometimes…and yet I love the mysteries it provides for me to ponder )