Dreaming Awake

It was midnight, and I hoped the flashlight was not visible under my bedroom door.

I was not ready to stop reading my book. According to my Dad’s rules, bedtime was 10 pm, and I should have been sleeping after all I had school the next day.

Reading began as an escape from the many days of discipline as I grew up. Back then, at fifteen, I was constantly grounded to my room (with no TV) for one reason or another.

It was usually my rebellious mouth questioning things that I didn’t like the answers to.

I would be in even more trouble if I got caught reading what I was reading.

I knew my Dad thought he had taken all of my historical romance books away from me, but he didn’t know that I had some stashed in a spot that he hadn’t seen when he confiscated all of my “fairytale books”….

I never got caught that night, and I did manage to hold on to the rest of my books.

I remember a year after that, showing up at the front door of my Poppies (my foster dad's) with two suitcases. One suitcase filled with nothing but my books. He retold that story so many times over the years, always saying it was meant to be that I found them.

My foster Mom had one room in their four-bedroom house dedicated wall-to-wall to historical romance books.

Years later, there have been times that I have wondered if maybe all those “fairytale books” did more harm than good.

I will, however, never admit that my Dad was right.

Unfortunately, I still hear him telling me those books would fill my head with nonsense about love.

I have often asked myself what sense it made to read about love stories from a different time.

I have always thought I was born in the wrong period.

Or could it be that my heart remembers a different time even if my mind does not, which is why I am pulled to love stories from a different era?

Those are the stories that I always remember having happy endings.

The ones in today's day and age, not so much.

I am most familiar with the relationships of couples that very easily discard each other.

It seems today that it is easier for people to start over than to work on making a relationship work.

I am also familiar with the other side of the pendulum…

The relationships where people stay together because it's easier than starting over.

I just spent almost eleven years with someone.

The last two years of the relationship, there was almost no intimacy.

I loved him, and he loved me; we never fought, but neither one of us, for all the happiness we portrayed, was truly happy.

In my historical romance books, they fought, but they stayed.

Never mind that the reality is that back then, divorce was frowned upon, and many couples stayed together because of this and both were actually very unhappy.

Those were not the stories that I read about.

Whether intelligent or not, I have a selective way of looking at things that sometimes bends my perspective to encourage the fantasies I want to believe in.

Needless to say, I didn’t spend time on non-fiction books from that era; only fiction ones.

I have always loved to debate and have always loved the idea of having a relationship that, through fighting, we challenge each other to grow.

In the stories I read, they fought, and their fighting made their love for each other more passionate as the years passed.

In these love stories, chivalry still exists.

I read about evil pulling them apart, but the strength of their love always overcame all the darkness, and together, they were strong and, in the end, defeated any obstacles.

To this day, I still think about having a love like that.

I think of that with you.

I imagine you would challenge my perspective on what you believe in.

I think of me challenging your perspective on what I believe in.

I have asked myself, “What if we can’t reconcile our differences?”

There are so many what-ifs about you and me.

In the light of day, the top one that makes me rethink my dreams of you is that you belong to someone else.

At night, though, it's different.

There is no place for logic in my bed.

Not with you.

I don’t care at night whether all this dreaming about you is smart.

Even though you are nowhere near me, you are still the last face I see before I sleep.

Wide-eyed and staring at my ceiling, I imagine some portal that somehow opens every night, allowing me to have what I desperately need.

If you were pressed against me, would I hear hunger in your voice, and would you find that place on my neck that longs for you to whisper against it?

I am trembling with this desire to have the heat of your lips there. I am filled with a want for you to taste me there between each of your words.

In this fantasy, you give me more than I ask for between the tasting; you gently bite.

Holding me against your chest while you push your fingers possessively into my hips, you tell me exactly what I long to hear….that I am only yours and that you are only mine.

In the stillness of the night, the breathless sound of my need in response to this dream of you cuts through the silence of my room.

How many times has my room heard your name in these moments that I allow myself to get lost in you?

My hand makes a fist as it grasps for the reality of you, only to find my pillow.

With a sigh, I toss my pillow away and push the covers away from my burning skin.

Minutes pass, and without my pillow and the covers, suddenly I am cold, and my heart aches.

Restless with my need for you is what I am.

I hope every night that I will dream of you.

They say we dream every night while we sleep.

I remember that I used to dream, but I don’t remember my dreams anymore.

Maybe those of us who dream while awake are not meant to dream while we sleep.