The unextinguished embers

The dream started off at a birthday party or something like that of a mutual friend.  I noticed that Kelly was there almost instantly, and for whatever reason I was still allowed at the party.  She looked subtly different, longer hair that was oddly darker and shiny, which for whatever reason made her appear slightly taller.  For the entire duration of the party, she just avoided me entirely, until the end when I approached her where she couldn't sneak away and asked as nicely as I could if she wanted to talk at all.  Here's things got complicated.  She agreed to talking for a little while at first but said that we had to limit it to thirty minutes because she had somewhere to go and she said that she knew when we talked, it usually could last for several hours (did I detect a tone of reminiscence?  Maybe).  So we hung around at the party until we all had to get going and go our separate ways. For whatever reason, my first car was in the dream, an old green F-150, except in this dream it looked a lot newer or cleaner at least.  The space-time of the dream wrinkled here and began in a different scene in the near future after the party.  I think we were in a place that looked like the long hallway in CLA, it was dark and eerie but not so much, just kind of like a basement that few people wander into that often.  We were both there and were still talking, and I asked her how the last year of college went.  Instantly the view shifted into alternating between my mind's eye of the last year and hers. She said that it seemed very short, like not much time had passed at all.  I couldn't agree less.  I was thinking about asking her if she had gone out with anyone since, but she answered before I got the chance to ask saying that she usually only hung out with her girl friends and hadn't really met anyone special like that yet.  I'm not sure what I said, but what I felt was relief.  This was the high-point of the dream, and the falling action afterwards was a little vague.  I think it took place over IM chat, where we were wrapping up and saying goodbye, and she said that I had ____ (I don't remember the word used in the dream, but it was some term my mind made up to encapsulate the meaning of "the right to cuddle with her, just whenever, no attachment or special relationship status as a prerequisite).  And it was at this point that my sub-conscious decided that the rest of the details were up to my imagination to fill in, and I woke up, first feeling a slight swoon of happiness and contentment, and then as this wave of tranquility washed over me, it soon dissipated into the ocean of reality.

I had several choices about what I would do with this dream.  I could mope all day and brood over it.  I could just ignore it and let it eat away at my sub-conscious and build up desire in my heart until driving me to madness.  Or, I could contain it inside of a journal entry, giving it its proper place and neither giving it free reign of my mind, neither kicking it out on the street for it to curse my hospitality and conspire to break in at some point later.

It no longer worries me what having all of these dreams about Kelly might mean, though it does puzzle me a little.  I hope this is the right strategy to pursue in trying to give proper voice to my thoughts and neither try to amplify nor squelch them.  Yes, I still think about her a lot, so I guess it's a matter of high probability as to when she will show up in my dreams.  My life is moving forward in so many ways.  Last night I had another awesome circumstance when I just got to be social and be myself unashamedly and talk with random people I didn't know at all as if it was normal.  Trust me, it is not normal for me, but something was such that it was last night.  I felt proud to be who I was and to like what I like and that those things which I deem awesome need to be shared with others.  I think that is a good way to describe how to be one with yourself, to have a whole identity: that is, to know yourself, what your delight is, what you want out of life, and what you are able to give back to life, and to let this knowledge define your interaction with others.  But, going back, let me draw an analogy.  In a war, there are many fronts to fight on, and you can choose to define the war in terms of any one of them at a given time, but to define the whole you must integrate over all the parts.  I can calmly say that my life is moving forward as a whole.  One of the battles that I have been fighting for a long time is trying to 'get over my ex-girlfriend,' which is of course a multi-faceted war within a war itself, but lets not get too zoomed in that we lose the big picture.  This front has come to what you might call a standstill.  I have sent in enough units to hold the line, but not to advance further just yet.  Why? you might ask?  Because like a good general, I need to manage my resources and unit count wisely.  I have been scouting ahead past the battle, and have seen that there is nothing yet on the other side of this skirmish for me to be really going after, and so I send in just enough firepower to hold things still and I am devoting the rest of my resources to other battles, to the home front to boost my economy and tech up, so that some day, once I determine that there is something to gain from winning that ongoing battle, then I will charge forward and break through the enemy's lines and I will crush them, because then I will have something to be fighting for on the other side, rather than just fighting simply to be done with fighting, which is never going to cease anyway, and I will be ready from having prepared myself on the home-front, and I will be able to recruit troops from other battles I have won in the meantime to fight on that front.  So what does this analogy boil down to?  My life has many challenges, and yet there is only so much mind capacity to handle it all, so it must be apportioned wisely.  Right now, I am choosing to focus on other battles and on the home-front, to focus on just simply getting better grades, on being a more dependable person, on being courteous and considerate and perceptive of my friends, etc.  I am trying to write and journal more and talk to friends more deeply, so I can know myself more and use that knowledge to get to know others.  But to win this battle, to fully and truly get over Kelly in the broadest possible meaning, I need a new relationship to be waiting on the other side of victory.  I am progressing in being single, because that is not a part of this battle that solely deals with the intimate interaction of two people, so it is not holding me back from growing in other areas; I have confined it to a small part of my life that would not even be functional anyway at this stage for me.  I have done my scouting, and there are no potential relationships in view, so as far as the melee of romance, I have nothing to move forward to just yet, but when I do, then it will be an easy matter of breaking this small siege and charging ahead.  As I've already said, my lines are moving forward on many fronts, and I am winning the war that is my life, but the line of progress is not a straight one.  It is warped and curved, and there are bulges in both directions, but the line as a whole continues to move forward, and that is all that is important.  That is why I do not worry that the embers of this battle are still burning.