A Letter

Dear Alex:
Yesterday I had two dreams about you. In the first, it was two days after our initial breakup, and instead of ignoring one another, you called me. We talked things out, we yelled and I cried, and then you got onto a train and came down and we talked everything out. Then the dream sped up to six months later, and we were still happy and communicating.
Later that night I had another dream, and we were walking around outside, being together and talking. Both dreams had us talking. Then suddenly I was running around my dorm room, throwing clothes into a basket and talking to you on the phone, planning some sort of trip we were going to go on that weekend to New York. My hair was long, and dark, and your voice was deeper.
I woke up more frustrated than upset. Almost exactly a month ago, I let it all go. We stopped talking as much, the fighting stopped, and I've been going out and talking with other guys (very, very casually... not actually "dating" but just being out) and taking steps to make me a happier, less fragile person. But the dreams derailed me a little bit, as vivid dreams often do. Everything you say anymore frustrates me, and I've tried terribly hard to make our relationship a distant memory... the hazy bottom of a muddy lake. But then things like this happen, and its like everything crystallizes and I see everything from the past come together in a clear image.
I suppose this all was triggered because I made an appointment with a counselor on Thursday, and I did it because of what happened, because I'm tired of allowing my Anxiety to run my life. Our breakup was not the first caused by one of my hysterical, anxiety-driven, panic-oriented freakouts. But I can't bear losing what I lost with you again, and I can't bear to see the damage that I've done, with you and my other ex's that I cared for deeply yet walked away from anyway. I can't stand to leave behind me a wake of wretchedness because I was too much of a chickenshit to admit that I am in over my head and I need help. I want to have healthy, loving relationships without waiting for the proverbial axe to drop.
Looking at the dreams, I'm happy that I have the sort of good memories that can still be manifested sometimes. I'll explain: the happiness of our relationship was positive enough that the tiniest blips of memory can still feed into dreams. I'm lucky, not many people have that kind of relationship with anybody where the thought of the memories still bring back the fierce power of the emotion or the frightened shock of loss that can still make my hands shake. I've been shown something powerful, and I can say that I've experienced love that seemed limitless, and I believe that it could have been in time. I'm happy for that, and thankful for that, and I hope that we both experience it again someday.
Sometimes I feel like those few months had enough love for a lifetime.
-Sarah Elizabeth