I was taking a day off on a Monday recently and had early morning dreams of meeting P - in an unfamiliar house in India. I was hosting. Some of my family was around but in a blur. He was with his wife and an adorable little daughter. He looked as young as I as remember him - a certain immutable quality to his face, age and time did not make him a different version of the person he used to be. There is good and bad to that as I would find out in my dream. I sought closure, which was always the theme of my dreams about him spanning close to three decades now. I tried to have the conversation that I was too young and stupid to have back then. He did not have much to say back then and in every dream that I have since, we always leave with lack of closure.
There was something blocked at the core of our relationship that made it so hard to cross the chasm that presumably we both wanted to. He struggled as much as I did but for reasons I did not understand. The vividness of these dreams and their lingering aftertaste of regret blended with sadness has not diminished over the years. Every time there is a hiatus in the dreams, I imagine this time its over and and I am truly done - but as I found out again that morning, not quite. Maybe the dreams are meant to tell me something quite different - that P was not the man I could grow with.
Life's experiences would wash over him and never change him in any discernable way - you had to wonder how he could be so impervious. He was a Peter Pan of sorts but always mindful of his responsibilities. I wanted see evolution even in those formative years that I knew him because I was experiencing transformation myself. That was before Life happened. The pace of change in me accelerated even further. My dreams of P are stuck in the groove of his mental state - which is ever unchanging. Maybe that's why they will never stop.
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