dreams

My husband always tells me that my dreams are my subconscious trying to work out issues.  I keep having this dream about a guy that I dated when I was a sophomore.  I haven't seen him or talked to him since at least 1992. 

David was a really good guy and I treated him very bad.  I was too caught up in my low self esteem and he wasn't very popular that I would often break up with him because I was embarrassed of him. I wanted to be popular more than anything and he was an anchor. I just thought that if I became popular that I would be happy.  Unfortunately, he was collateral damage.  He soon became tired of the back and forth, and stop participating in my game.  I wanted him back.  I am not sure if it is because he was not there anymore or if it was because I genuinely realized what I had lost.  I just remember feeling black on the inside because I had treated him so bad. I am Facebook friends with his sister, but I don't know if she has put the two together because I am sure that she would not like for treating her brother so badly.  Then I remind myself that was 1987 and I am sure all parties except for me have gotten over it. 

I remember when my husband and I started dating I told my best friend that I had met my nerd.  The guy I could count on, the guy that would cherish me, and not treat me bad.

I know what it feels like to be treated bad so it really bothers me when I look at my past and know that I have treated some people who really cared about me like crap.  Then it makes me wonder if I chose the people who treated me bad because I felt like I deserved it.  Going back to that NIN song, I hurt myself today to see if I still feel....I focus on the pain....its the only thing that's real.  Pain I can do, I am very used to it.  Joy is hard, you can't really enjoy it because you know it will end and then the pain will come back. 

My niece had a post on Facebook the other day about feeling good and having anxiety about when it will end.  I wanted to stop time.  She is so much like me that it absolutely scares me.  I tried to send her an uplifting text about good and bad, you have to have the bad to enjoy the good, but when you have the good, enjoy it.  I so do not want her to go through all of the pain that I have the last 40 years.  I would walk through fire to keep that from happening.