Losing You in Dreams, Finding Myself Awake

The phone screen lights up. The pinned chat window remains frozen on “Goodnight” from half a year ago. Your profile background has changed—a travel shot from a city I’ve never been to. The sunlight is blinding; you’re smiling brighter than you ever did for me.

My fingers hover, trembling. The keyboard pops up, then I dismiss it. Type “Are you up?” — delete. Type “Dreamed of you” — delete. Want to send “I’m sorry,” but end up with nothing but a blank record of typing and erasing.

Reality is far crueler than dreams. It allows no “what ifs,” only “results.”

I finally understand what “loving to the extreme is letting go” means. What “a dignified breakup is the final tenderness” means.

I love you enough to not even possess you in dreams—only to collapse without restraint in the abyss of the unconscious. Upon waking, I must burn this madness, this “inability to hold back,” this selfish desire to grind you into dust and knead you into my bones—burn it all to ash and scatter it to the wind.

I will not turn back. I won’t wait under your building. I won’t drink to post manic updates. I won’t probe your life under the guise of “concern.” And I certainly won’t drunk-dial that familiar, strange number in some midnight hour.

Your freedom, your choices, your new life, the new light beside you—none of it concerns me anymore.

This is the final dignity I can offer you, and the final dignity I can afford myself.

In the nights to come, perhaps I will still dream of you, again and again. Dream of brushing past you in our old alley. Dream of you turning back to call my name. Dream of me, still unable to hold back, holding you and weeping apologies.

But when I wake, I will rub my stinging eyes, fold the blanket, drink a sip of warm water, and say to the reflection in the mirror—still sober, still intact: “Good morning. Another new day.”

In dreams, I lost to loving you. In reality, I won myself back, and set you free.

This is enough.