A dream this morning

I had a really sweet dream this morning, and I want to write it down before I forget.

In the dream, I was at university (which, by the way, barely resembled the university I attend) to give an exam. I was climbing up a flight of stairs when I glanced over my shoulder to ask a friend which room the exam was being held in, and that’s when I saw him. Someone I used to love. A red scarf around his neck, he was dressed in a sky-blue button-down and navy blue pants. I remember this outfit clearly from real life, minus the scarf. I saw him, and my heart started to race, even in the dream. My dreams are either super emotionally charged, or they are very watered down, neutral. This was somewhere in the middle. At the moment, I could have sworn that it was real.

But anyways, I take the stairs and ask my friend to guide me to the exam room, all the while hyper-aware that he was only a few feet behind me, still in my peripheral vision. However, as my friend takes me to the room, I lose sight of him. I don’t think he has noticed me yet. He seemed too involved with some other people, who I assumed he was doing a group project with. We were in the room now, my lecturer smiling warmly at me. She waved at me to take an empty seat. It seemed I was the last one there, and the room was quite small. I quickly drop my stuff at my seat; it was time for the exam. Nevertheless, I asked her whether I could quickly use the bathroom before we began. She nodded, and at that moment I knew that I would see him when I opened the door of the room. And I was right, there he was. Red scarf around his neck, occupied by his own thoughts. I think his gaze flitted to me once, but there was no reaction. We both entered the same bathroom, different cubicles, and I quickly did my business, not wanting to interact with him before an exam lest it should mess with my head. Still, I felt something unspoken there, like I always do.

But anyways, I returned to the exam. In the dream, it went by pretty quickly, and before I knew it, it was the end. The lecturer had already left, she had asked us to hand her all our answers later on (so unrealistic, I know). At some point, he had entered the room and was sitting at the very back. He was working on a scientific poster on his laptop, I think. But I was a little stressed out because I wasn’t done with my exam yet. I can’t fill the gaps of what happened here, but somehow he was next to me in the next moment. My left hand was by my side, while I furiously wrote with my right. He noticed that I was stressed and took my free hand gently in his, lacing his fingers between mine. It was a calming gesture, incredibly grounding. I think there were a couple of “I love you”s exchanged in whispers.

I think the dream continued after that, I can’t fully remember what happened, but his gesture of tenderly comforting me was so innocent, so simple, that I can’t help but dwell a little on it now. I don’t dream about him as often as I used to. I don’t think about him as often as I used to. In fact, in real life, I feel quite ambivalently about our whole relationship and him. But in this dreamland, we were something else. Something pure, kindred, and sweet. I’ve written about what love is before. And I think this is it, what I felt in my dream. Although it doesn’t translate to real life, not that I would particularly want it to right now, I am blessed to experience the sanctity of it in my dreams.