Last night, I had a dream in which I traveled the necessary 2000 miles to visit one of my old high school teachers, one I had a close relationship with at one time. I spent most of my time vying unsuccessfully for even his conversational attention, because he was wholly fixated on a college student with a passion for rock-climbing.

The night before, I had a dream about one of my exes, "the one that got away." I kept trying to get his attention to talk to him too, but he kept avoiding me and eventually wouldn't even look at me.

Dreams are supposed to be an escape from the shortcomings of reality; a fulfillment of wishes that are left unsaid. Alternatively, they should offer revelation; exposure of a personal or universal truth that the dreamer would rather not face. My dreams no longer accomplish either purpose. I am well aware of my life's emptiness, the indifference of those who were once my friends, and this is clearly not something that I desire.

Sleep is not an escape. And while it may enable my body to go on functioning, it merely breaks my already-vulnerable mind down further.

I miss living in a world where people loved and cared about me. I miss living in a world where I was good at tasks I set my mind to, where people were excited to see me and I felt like friendships, and even family relationships, were modes of meaningful exchange. I miss living something that I appropriately called "life," instead of the mere existence I can lay claim to now.

I do not know how longer I will even bother to claim that.

love has made me a fool
it set me on fire and watched as I floundered
unable to speak
except to cry out and wait for your answer

- Sarah McLachlan, "Stupid"

There are many different ways in which people respond to tragedy. Some detach from others, hoping to find a way of seeing what has happened in a way that makes sense to them alone. Others cling more closely to their friends, seeking comfort in group understanding. Still others fluctuate wildly between the different approaches, discarding each method as it proves itself ineffective and readopting it when enough time has passed to forget its inadequacies.

Over the course of a year, I lost two people I cared about. My mother revealed that she was no longer interested in claiming me as a daughter, or even as a friend. And a friend died, someone who knew and understood me better than anyone else. The combined force of these two events hit me harder than anything else I have ever experienced. I suppose my response to them was an unsurprising one. With such devastating blows to my faith in rationality and skepticism, family, and friendship, I turned to my only remaining ideal for comfort: love.

Everything else shattered or nearly so, I began to believe that love was the only thing that could save me. Not the lukewarm, agape love of undiscriminating charity or religion, but true love's purifying flame -- the one that always seems to lead literary characters to some kind of quietly dignified salvation. I realized in no uncertain terms that I could no longer face the world on terms of my own making, and that no matter what, I would be absorbed. I could only choose the outlet into which my matter would be poured.

I suppose I was luckier than many in that there was someone around who did love me already. What could have been a disastrous difference in feeling ended up being only a difference in magnitude. I went to two doors, though, seeking someone within them someone in whose arms I could collapse in tears and devote the rest of my life to. One person closed it, perhaps forever. The other one gave me sanctuary.

I loved him desperately, in the way that only someone who is desperate can love. I allowed myself to feel and to need -- basically, to give another human being access to every single part of me that I had ever withheld. I was sure he would take me in, strip me of my identity, and bind me to him forever. Because I loved him, and respected him...even before I had to, I was ready to give up every part of myself that I had ever claimed was wholly my own; every ideal I had ever cherished. To sacrifice my atheism, my curiosity, my sexuality. I prayed to be able to have him, to keep him, not because I felt like God could hear me, but because I hoped that he, my boyfriend, somehow could.

But though he would have me, he would not have that, so I find myself now in much the same situation as before, a little worse for the wear but otherwise alright. I am no longer desperately in love, in fact I find myself even more skeptical than before about how those feelings can only be created by need, and not by anything more positive than that.

I can't even imagine how things in my life might turn out anymore. Will I have gotten married by 30? Will I be capable of loving someone new, that I haven't already met yet? It seems that with every new failed relationship, I go back to missing the one who was smart enough to finally shut the door, even after leaving it open for so long.

When I was sick once, I made an offhand comment: "Why should I tell you if I'm sick? What are you going to do, hold my head as I vomit?" And he said, "Do you think I wouldn't?" Another time, I was told, "I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, ever." I remember being knelt on the floor before as I sat on a chair, eyes looking up at me with love as arms encircled me.

There are grains of beauty within the waves of a life that is mostly unhappy. Or maybe, it's that a stream of pain flows beneath the surface of daily existence. I've only known one person who shared that sentiment with me, but, of course, I didn't believe it at the time.

I'm sorry for my distance, the distance I've always felt from people, even the ones who loved me and I loved. I can only hope that at some point before I die, I can provide someone else with the empathy I feel now, even in retrospect. Compatibility is rarely properly timed, it seems. I pray (and this time, I really don't know to who) that I will begin to learn from my mistakes eventually, and hopefully, sometime soon, before I end up hopeless, bitter, and incapable of any salvation.