Dream of a Broken Heart, or Was It?

This morning I had a dream that felt extremely weird and for the first time was literally a dream within a dream. What I mean is that, literally I was dreaming (in my sleep), but in that dream I was dreaming. I woke up twice altogether, the first time being in the dream, and the second time I woke up in my room to face reality.

So, I know it sounds confusing and I am honestly not sure how to type this so I don’t confuse anyone but I will do my best. To give some insight the dream was about a guy I have known for almost 3 years. We met online and have never met in person. Distance for him is a problem, and for me, not so much. Over the past month or so I could feel myself developing romantic feelings that I wanted to express openly or more freely, but was scared to do so because I did not want to push him away or create something awkward between us. He thinks it is not possible to love someone without having met them, and for me, while I agree...I believe it depends on the situation and what it all entails. So instead of telling him how I felt, I began to pull myself away emotionally because I knew what I wanted to happen would not. For the sake of some privacy, I’ll keep his name unknown, but refer to him as..."C", the first initial of his name.

Okay, now for the dream:

The dream began with me somehow receiving news or hearing news that C was going to be leaving. Or perhaps it was intuition, I cannot quite recall. But, I had the distinct knowledge that he was going to leave and the idea frightened me and I needed to know that he was still there. I remember running down the street late at night and to this apartment building and I somehow saw C through the window. He was standing in the center of the living room, slightly turned away from me and he was staring at this digital alarm clock on a small table beside the couch. He was looking at the time. I opened the window by sliding it up and I carefully crawled into the room and as I did C turned to look at me. He was quiet for a moment and he only watched me as I walked closer.

"You’re still here," I said, and while I felt relieved I almost felt...like it was too good to be true. I almost expected him to be gone.

"Of course I’m still here," he replied, slightly confused, but he almost sounded sad. I wrapped my arms around him then and hugged him as if I never wanted to let him go. He held me and we didn’t say anything else.

That night we slept in the same bed (we didn’t have sex or anything) but when I woke up he was gone. The bed, the room, the apartment...he was utterly and completely gone. All that remained of his presence was a poem that he had written and left on the pillow. (In real life C is a writer as well as deep and philosophical thinker). In the dream, I could read every line of the poem, but when I woke up all I remembered was him talking about time, how things change, and how the bus had to "go, go, go..."

I started to cry, well, sob rather. I am not a very emotional person in reality, even though I feel a lot, I don’t cry often. I’ve been heartbroken before and even then I didn’t cry despite the hollow feeling I felt. However, in the dream I felt a pain that was almost unbearable and with each sob, my body shook and spasmed, my tears soaking the blankets and sheets. Everywhere I went, all I did was cry. I cried as I walked, in the shower, and it seemed like it wouldn’t stop. Even when I woke up, I awoke with a numb feeling and tears in my eyes as if I had been crying for hours.

I awoke from that dream while I was crying into my other dream.

I was lying in bed, staring at my ceiling and it was morning. I realized that the situation of me losing C was only a dream and I was okay. I wasn’t sobbing and I wasn’t heartbroken. I felt however I needed to be sure and I left my house in search of C, feeling like I needed to find him and tell him how I felt. I needed to tell him that I loved him.

As I was running, I found him walking towards the Post Office. In the back of my mind I wondered, "What the hell is he doing here?" but I was too excited to see him to pay it much thought. I called his name and he turned to me and smiled some, asking what I was doing.

Like in my previous dream I said, "You’re still here."

He laughed a little and said, "Of course I am. What’s wrong?"

I then told him that I had a dream about him, and I explained the dream to him. He only looked at me and said, "Well, I wouldn’t leave you."

And that is when I told him, "I left out something in my dream. In the dream I had told you that I loved you, and you left. That is why you left. You left because I told you how I felt."

C only nodded and looked away from me, but I took his face in both of my hands and brought his gaze back to mine. "But, I do love you, C," I murmured, "I do. I love you."

I wasn’t sure how I expected him to react, whether he would run away or tell me not to feel such things, but when he said that he loved me too and passionately kissed me, I was not complaining. We left the Post Office then and spent the entire day together. We went back to my house and cooked together. I remember that while I was standing in the kitchen by the counter, I heard my mother’s voice. Whether she was in the house, or her voice was in my mind as a memory, I do not know...but it sounded distant, and clear. She was wishing me well and told me "to be blessed".


That is when I finally woke up, and I was in my room, in my bed...with a thin layer of tears in my eyes and a throbbing in my head as if I had been crying. I had woken up with a half-choking gasp and I felt lightheaded, as if I had been under water for too long, or some place deep. It took me a while to realize that everything that had happened, everything I had experienced was nothing but...a dream.

And, crazily enough. For the third time, I sought C out, but this time by a phone call. Everything seemed so real, I had to hear his voice and see if he was there, and tell him my dream. I was still trying to catch my breath when he answered, and it was only until I heard his voice that I felt stupid. Was I really going to tell this guy about my dream in which I had spilled my guts out to him?

But I did. He listened quietly, but near the end when I told him that I said I had loved him, he interrupted me to ask, "When you said you loved me, in what way did you mean that?" I already knew by the time the conversation was over, whatever romantic scenario I dreamed about would not form to actually exist.

When I was done talking about my dream, C said to me, "Okay, Liz...I am going to ask you again...how do you feel about me?" He had asked me this before, and each time I had made my feelings seem smaller than what they were, because I knew him. I knew our views on intimacy, love, and emotions differed---that he needed physical touch and not distance, and I could adapt to situations if my feelings were deep enough, but it isn’t the same for him.

After a pause, I told him the truth and said, "I believe that I am falling in love with you."

Immediately, he asked me, "How?" and began to analyze how our thought processes differed and that love doesn’t develop over distance.

So, I explained that because of our differences I had been withdrawing myself emotionally. Getting back to the dream, he said that maybe I had two dreams because I had been thinking about the topic a lot, it had been on my mind and took more of my attention in the form of a dream.

Either way, I do not know. I had never experienced something like that before, and it shook me a bit. In the first dream, I lost him. In the second, I had him. Then once I awoke, in reality...well, nothing happened. In a way I lost him because I had to let go of my romantic ideals, which is fine, life goes on I know. I’m still just trying to make more sense of the dream and how real it was.