Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded in dreamsofhim's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005
6:32 pm	epilogue I got married over a year ago. I love my husband more than anything else in the entire world. I'd take a bullet for this guy, seriously. But somehow I still think of Ralph all the time. It still causes my chest to tighten and makes me feel like crying. I still dream about him. In my dreams, I can hug him and feel that the electrical ZAP is gone. It's both calming and saddening. I heard that when he found out I was getting married, Ralph was inconsolable. He told my best friend that yeah, he had been in love with me. He told my mother that he should have asked me to be with him when he had the chance. He said he would have run away with me, far from the lives we had. I could have been happy, I think. I could have sat at his feet for the rest of my life, just laughing and laughing. I'm honestly happy now, though. I realize that someone could read this and laugh at how I fell for an older man and say it's gross and inappropriate or whatever. Fine. This story is not about that, it's about a very deep connection I had with another person that is gone now, that I miss fiercely. I wanted to write about this because I want to stop thinking about it so goddamned much, I want it to stop hurting. I like to think that maybe one day we could see each other again and be friends like we used to, but it's probably impossible. Oh well. I've dumped out my story, maybe I'll make additions to it or come back and read it sometime. Who knows. Current Mood: blah (1 Comment |Comment on this)
6:03 pm	fin Eventually, I found myself at the tail end of yet another unbelievably awful week. I had my wisdom teeth removed, then I came home to find the moron boyfriend drunk and violent. Moron boyfriend then decided to start hitting me, grabbing my sore face in his hand, holding a knife to my throat. After biting, scratching, kicking, flailing and screaming on the floor of my apartment's tiny kitchen for several hours, I broke free and ran down the hall, only to be trapped yet again in the elevator by the knife-weilding psycho. A few more hours of the screaming and sobbing and the boyfriend got bored or tired and left me to stumble to my car and drive to safety. I came back the next morning with police and my bulky stepfather. So began the first time I'd ever lived totally alone. I came into work on Monday, in a turtleneck in the goddamned middle of summer, and spent most of the day hiding and crying to my best friend. At the end of the day, at 4:30, my boss took me back to the HR Director's office, informed me that I was fired and she was very sorry, and left the room. I broke down, and at the time it wasn't because I was losing my only source of income or because I'd just had the shit beaten out of me or because I was being fired for my boss's fuckups, but because it meant that I'd never be able to see Ralph again. I was given a box in which to pack all of my personal belongings. I filled it with all the little presents Ralph had given me and schlepped it out to my car, telling all of my (former) coworkers I encountered what had happened. I didn't see my Ralph anywhere. Evidently, someone ran him down in the parking lot and told him what happened just has he was starting to drive home. I put the box in my car and climbed in, then sat there and just cried. After a few minutes, I looked up to see Ralph's car pulled right up to mine. His window was about four inches from mine. I rolled down my window and looked at him. "I'm sorry, Mankey," he said, and I lost it all over again at his tone and the use of our old (Pokemon-related) nickname for each other. I told him what happened, and he reached out and touched my arm. Then my face. I wanted him to kiss me, to continue comforting me, to do ANYTHING but get a sad look in his eyes and move away the way he did. We just sat there and looked at each other. He told me I could come to his house if I needed anything. We both knew I wouldn't. I drove home. He called me every now and then during the next few weeks, to make sure I was okay or to tell me that he saw some job in the paper and thought of me. I called him back sometimes. I don't know. What do you say to someone you love, who loves you, but who you can't have? We could enjoy each other's company at work, but anything beyond that seemed too inappropriate. It was over. Current Mood: crushed (Comment on this)
5:27 pm	etc I would have loved to have run away with him. Unfortunately, he was married but estranged - his wife lived with her folks most of the time and only came home to pick up or deliver their son. From what I understand, they never divorced because she was deeply religious. She wasn't when they met. That's all I know about her, other than the fact that I found an old photo of the two of them in the company's PR photo vault. It was from some company picnic years and years before I started working there. They were a cute couple and they looked happy. The photo was yellowed, and looking at it always made me unspeakably sad. I was sad a lot during that time in my life, I think. I had stupidly started dating yet another moron, yet again just for the hell of it. I had stupidly allowed said moron to move in with me and immediately begin making my life miserable. I was unhappy. Going to work and seeing Ralph was all I had to look forward to. Pokemon had just come out at that time, and we both became obsessed with them. We would talk excitedly, this man in his early forties and I, about Pikachus and Grimers and Charizards. He once stopped his car dead in the middle of a four lane road to pick up an abandoned Pikachu doll and give it to me as a present. He loved giving me presents, and he always knew the kind of crazy shit I'd appreciate. He gave me a collection of "Things That Could Poke Your Eye Out," which was, in essence, a bunch of sharp objects. I displayed them proudly on the wall of my office. I had - and have, to this day - a square piece of wallpaper that he found and gave to me. It was brown and gold and ivory, and was the most hideous pattern you could imagine. I loved it. Our relationship continued as such for a long time. Giving each other presents, talking in our secret language, keeping the skin-to-skin contact minimal for fear of what would happen. I started having sex dreams about him. Our conversations were full of innuendo and appreciative glances. Current Mood: blank (Comment on this)
4:50 pm	Round two As I mentioned in the previous entry, I developed a crush on Ralph as a teenager. I looked forward to going to work so I could talk to him. I got the same job the next summer, and the summer after that, so I could be near him. We became great friends. We spoke to each other in a way that mystified other people, like we had our own language that nobody understood but us. And as I got older, the attraction clearly became mutual. He would bring me odd little presents that he knew I'd appreciate (a scrap of hideous wallpaper, a fast food kid's meal toy). He would do things like come into my little office in the morning so I could run the back of my hand over his freshly shaved cheek. He was always so proud of a good clean shave - he would present his face for inspection, I would give it my approval, and he would thank me and walk away grinning. Hey, I said he was strange. Soon I graduated high school and went off to college. Well, I didn't exactly go "off" - college was just a few miles from the old workplace, and I commuted from my grandparents' house. I would visit often on my way home after class. One rainy day, I left my car's headlights on for hours in the university's parking lot and burned out the battery, and called my mother to get some help. She sent Ralph to rescue me, and he arrived in his big old pickup truck, the cab of which was covered in stickers (mostly that his little son put there). He jumpstarted my car and I swooned like the proverbial damsel in distress being rescued by her knight in shining armor. College was a crazy time. I started dating a guy who I honestly thought was a moron, but stuck with just for the hell of it. I worked two jobs and slept maybe three hours each night. Then, during one completely unbelievable week, I found myself jobless, dumped, and dropped out of school. There's a story there, but that's not what's important. The important thing is that I suddenly found myself in need of a full-time job, and applied at the old company. They hired me as a Public Relations Assistant. At first, everything was great. Both of my parents worked there, my best friend worked there, and I got to see Ralph every day. I took up smoking just so I could take smoke breaks with him, so I could stand there on the tiny concrete back porch and be close to him, breathe his smell, be weird with him. The crush became unbearably intense. The daily shaved-face-tests now came with an almost visible electric ZAP of sexual energy. We both had always observed our friendship in a fairly intimate but non-touchy way - we didn't hug, we didn't give pats on the back. I came to realize that this was probably for the best, because each time we touched it was like being struck by lightning. More later. Current Mood: nostalgic (Comment on this)
3:42 pm	So it begins. (I'm going to try to break this up over several entries. And I'm not concerned with writing coherently or cohesively; I'm not entering a goddamned contest or trying to impress anyone. I'm just letting all this out.) I don't think of him so often anymore, but when I do, it's usually because I've had a dream about him. We met when I was, God, maybe 14. I had taken a summer job at my mother's place of employment, filing papers and answering phones. It was a boring job, but it was made fun by the strange collection of people working there. Not a single person in that office could qualify as "normal." Everyone had twisted senses of humor, so I fit right in. I spent most of my days there laughing. My favorite of this crazy collection of personalities was Ralph. Ralph was a very intense man in his late thirties, who was very intelligent and deeply ensconsed in his own little world. He was of medium heigth, had thick brown hair, and wore these old photograde glasses which covered wild, neon blue eyes. People liked to speculate that Ralph was crazy; I believed that he had a delightfully bizarre outlook on the world. He would make up terminology that would be impossible to understand if you didn't know him. His sense of humor was offbeat, filthy and oftentimes cruel. We clicked immediately. He appreciated the fact that I wasn't put off by his behavior, I was delighted that we seemed to be on the same "wavelength." Unlike a lot of people who just laughed at his strange antics, I understood what he was saying. The things he was saying to amuse himself, that he knew other people didn't understand. He would arch an eyebrow at me whenever he saw that I got it. I was smitten. Current Mood: melancholy (Comment on this)