by Ethan Johnson
October 20, 2008

I do not know if the intended recipient of the following message will ever, in fact, receive it. The casual reader or web search layover is advised that it most certainly is not meant for your consumption, and yet I shall take no measures to prevent it.

I had an upsetting dream about you recently. The details will not be recounted here, other than to note that it interests me that the goings-on in Dreamland are wont to be strange and unsettling, and yet as the events unfold, do so matter-of-factly. No matter how wild or extremely unlikely (or inappropriate), they play out so logically, don't they? Of course Jesus can't find a good donut in this town, and as soon as you bail out your 4-story home (in a place you have never lived) and get someone to care for your pet alligator, you'll quit your job at the Hedge Fund to help with the search. When doesn't that happen?

This dream wasn't so zany. In short, it involved attitudes and actions that I do not harbor about you. And at the end of it all, I tried to spin it as me being the hero.

I beat myself up for days afterward, wondering why (literally) such thoughts were put into my head. I have dreamt many an irrational dream, but this one stung deeply. Why? Why you, and why this dream? Worse, it wasn't You as I know You, but the "dream you", which shared the same name and little else.

Yet this brought on deep shame and guilt. I feel the need to apologize for what I assume was my subconscious, and even it is distancing itself.

But as this was the "dream you" and not the real You, I am loathe to name names or confirm any suspicions as to Your identity.

But I had to say something, somehow, somewhere.

This is my chosen medium to air out these thoughts.

Upon reflection, I have been wondering what Your role is in my life. How did we meet? Why did we meet that way? We see each other so rarely anymore, but You are still an integral piece to my personal mosaic. I do not know if I serve a similar role in your life. It is probably well that I do not know.

There is a belief system that claims that we all travel in the same circles, lifetime after lifetime, and when we hit it off with a stranger unexpectedly and become life-long friends, or get married, or work together, or are family members, we have found another member of our "circle". Perhaps this is so, and perhaps we met in this reality, in this time, because we had to. Like Gollum, we serve a purpose for good or ill, and we're too far away from the finish, or our noses are pressed too close to the picture to perceive those ends.

Arguably, we should just be enjoying the "now" and living our lives. And we will, and are.

I do not feel that we are destined to be anything other than what we are, today. I am comfortable with that. But it nags at me that there's something else, something more resonant, something knowable yet unknown. I feel that You are a missing link to something, or the nature of your relationship to me will not overtly manifest itself for a long time. Perhaps we do go back a ways, to times forgotten by our present selves but are known to our souls. I apparently pulled a string and found it was tied to you, and in so doing, I tore out a chunk of myself. This disturbs me on many levels, and I am afraid to speculate as to what this might mean.

So why say anything publicly about something so deeply private?

I figure we're already having this dialog on more esoteric levels. In order to purge myself of these black thoughts and lay them bare (yet occluded) for me to mull over and at best, dismiss.

Know that I love you, I have a love for many, and it is this love that fuels my guilt, and insists on reparations where it might be argued none are necessary to make. I cannot be so callous because it involves You.

And it is this love that compels me to speak publicly yet obliquely, so as not to drag you into a psychic drama of which you had no knowledge of your central part. May You who are meant to receive this message receive it kindly. <EM>