Still Capable of Love

Last night I dreamt I was in love.

Nothing memorable was happening.

No declaration. No cinematic kiss. No scene that makes you wake up wondering whether your unconscious has hired a mediocre screenwriter.

We were at home.

He was in a dressing gown. I had errands to run. Before I left, he handed me the keys to his motorbike.

That was all.

And that was exactly what got me.

Not desire.

Normality.

The quiet familiarity of somebody handing you keys without thinking about it. The sense that, for that moment, his life and yours did not need explaining.

In the dream I was happy.

Not ecstatic.

Happy.

Then I woke up.

For a few seconds the happiness stayed. Then nostalgia arrived, and finally that small hollow feeling you get when you wake from a dream in which, for a few minutes, you were better off than in your own room.

I thought I missed him.

It was not that simple.

When details become evidence

That man really existed.

So did the intimacy. So did the trust.

But that does not mean the story some part of me wanted ever existed.

There were no promises. No declarations. There was real closeness to which I probably gave a different weight.

A gesture can be intimate without being a promise.

Somebody can look for us, desire us, trust us, fall asleep beside us — and still not love us in the way we want to be loved.

Sex does not necessarily resolve the ambiguity. Sometimes it means a great deal. Sometimes it simply means sex.

I have always noticed details.

A gesture. A pause. The way somebody returns. How long they stay. How they sleep beside you.

Attention can be a form of care.

But when we want somebody, five small true facts can become one completely false story.

Not because we are stupid. Because we hope.

The elegant way to be left

When I realised I was feeling too much, I did not tell the truth.

I created confusion.

I moved closer, then away. Said one thing and suggested another. Then disappeared.

I preferred to make the situation difficult enough that the other person would leave.

If he left, I would never have to say the sentence I was trying to avoid:

I want you more than you want me.

No confession. No rejection.

Only pain, but without that precision.

Sometimes we do not push somebody away because we want to lose them. We push them away because we cannot bear the idea of asking them to stay.

The photograph

I still have a photograph of him sleeping beside me.

I remember watching him to make sure he was resting well.

It is a tiny detail. And it probably tells the whole story.

For years I could have looked at that photograph and asked what that night meant to him.

Now I am far more interested in what it says about me.

It says I could care. Be tender. Let somebody much further inside than I was willing to show.

Was I involved? Yes. Probably more than I wanted to admit.

But falling in love is not naivety.

It is chemistry, desire, projection, a need for closeness.

And sometimes a desire to feel protected.

There is no age limit for wanting that

I do not mean money, material security or somebody arriving to solve our life.

I mean the calm that can exist inside an embrace.

That moment when you finally think:

I can relax for a while. For a few minutes, somebody else can think about me.

Perhaps I know where some of that desire comes from.

I missed having a father figure.

That does not mean I spent my life looking for a father in the men I loved. That would be far too convenient an explanation.

But perhaps I know the feeling of having to hold myself up.

So protection, for me, has never meant being maintained, rescued or directed.

It means being able to lower the guard.

Not always being the one checking that everything is all right.

Letting somebody else do it for me, even for a few minutes.

Perhaps that is why the photograph affects me differently now.

I was awake. He was sleeping.

I was making sure he could rest.

Maybe part of me wanted to know what it felt like on the other side.

To be the one who could close his eyes.

Protect yourself

If I could speak to the man I was then, I would not tell him to confess.

I would not tell him to risk everything.

I would say:

Protect yourself.

Not every feeling has to become a story.

We can love somebody and understand, at the same time, that they are not a place we can live.

But before leaving I would add:

Protect yourself, but not so well that you forget you are capable of love.

Dark glasses

For years I looked at reality as though through dark glasses.

Perhaps they protected me from the light. Perhaps they also let me choose how much reality to let in.

Sometimes it is easier to imagine than to look.

We need filters. The problem begins when we forget they are filters.

Imagination can keep us inside a story for a very long time.

But it keeps us there only as long as we want to stay.

Then we can take the glasses off.

I do not wear dark glasses anymore.

Not because I have become braver. Not because reality has become kinder.

And certainly not because I have stopped being romantic.

I simply do not need them anymore.

What the dream left behind

In the dream I was not interpreting.

I was not looking for signs. I was not asking what place I occupied in his life. I was not preparing an escape.

He was in a dressing gown.

I had errands to run.

He had given me the keys to his motorbike.

And I was in love.

It is almost ridiculous.

We spend a lifetime looking for great proofs of love and then, at night, the brain builds happiness out of a dressing gown and a set of keys.

Perhaps it knows something we forget.

Last night he came back for a few hours.

When I woke up, he disappeared again.

What did not disappear was the part of me that knew how to love.

Perhaps the dream was simply reminding me that I had not lost it.