Angels and Dreaming

Crashing from a dream and finding angels along the way

I’ve had a bizarre week. 

I went on a date with someone last week that didn’t really go anywhere. We had seen each other a couple of times back in July, and in the interim, I spent a month idealizing her until she was less of a person and more of an idea of a perfect person. She wasn’t a person who ever really knew me, but I let my fantasies flourish and imagined her as someone that she had shown no indications of being, one who could slot into my life and understand the deeper parts of my soul. I built expectations and hope of a world with this idea of a being. And when we went on our date on Thursday, it was immediately evident that she wasn’t the one in my mind.

A few weeks ago, I wrote this:

What would it be like if I could let myself recklessly feel? To not only have a crush, but let it consume me, even if it would inevitably lead to disappointment or hurt?

Despite all of the wonderful ideas about living that I write about, it’s rare that I actually put all of them into practice immediately or effectively. I try to bring some elements here and there, but it’s rarely so direct. After a month of letting a crush consume me, there I was, discovering what it’s like to recklessly feel. It’s deep and dark and a beautiful, human thing that reminds me of the diversity of lived experience. I’ve always demonized desire out of fear of the consequences, the disappointment, but fear isn’t a trustworthy guide through life. 

When we crush, we build towers out of fantasies and when we stand upon them, we suffer the consequences when the foundation was made of dust. I fell so hard. The night that my delusions fell apart, I sat in my bed until 3am wondering when I would be able to stop thinking. In my fantasies, I had been distracted from my insecurities and stresses, and now they all seemed to return with a burning vengeance. I spiraled, thinking about everything that was wrong with me or could be different. I was sad. I knew it was of my own doing, but I didn’t regret it at all. I was sad but eventually I was also in awe of my sadness, somehow joyous to be experiencing it at all. For the first time in so long I let myself imagine something perfect. I had let myself dream stupidly and openly and freely and even though it didn’t work out, it felt like an achievement. It felt right. It felt terrible and also felt nice.

But things didn’t feel awe-inspiring and nice immediately. I didn’t have regret, but for the next few days, I was in a haze of sorts. I trudged through life in my sea of melancholy, largely keeping to myself to try and process how I felt. I wanted to get out of my emotional sludge, so I tried to get outside. 

It was a nice day so I walked to the grocery store to get a drink and some watermelon so I could sit in the park and hope that the sun and the grass would heal me. Instead, as I looked at the fridges of waters and drinks, an older woman looked over at me and asked me, “who gave you that hair?” I was confused and she continued, “you have beautiful hair, you should thank whoever gave that to you!” I briefly told her about how it must be from my mom’s side, and she told me once again to be grateful about it. It was a simple exchange, with maybe 30 words shared in total, but somehow one of the most emotionally moving experiences of my week. 

It felt like a switch had been flipped — somehow this moment of kindness rewired my entire brain chemistry. The fog of my mood seemed to lift, the sky seemed bluer, the grass more verdant, the sun warmer and my heart fuller. It was as if I had been reminded of my humanity, of my connection to my mother, of my connection to other people — all through a random compliment a stranger gave from the goodness of her heart. I was shaken to my core. I decided to go through with plans with friends I was thinking about flaking on and I had a great weekend. I’ve felt pretty good since.

She didn’t have any wings, but the woman in the grocery store felt like an angel, sent to save me at the perfect time. With something so simple, she was able to alter the direction of my entire week. I thought about how easy it was for her to change my whole day, I thought about how I wished I could do that for other people. 

I immediately started telling some of my friends about the experience, and then I was opening up to them about my experiences with my failed crush and realized that they were angels too, constantly blessing my life and making it easier to see the beauty in my pain. Before this point, I’d been afraid to talk about my feelings, thinking that they wouldn’t understand how I felt. But angels aren’t like that. They affirmed me and made me feel a lot better about everything that I’d gone through, by listening and sharing poems and amazing things to read.

I’ve been seeing angels everywhere ever since. I’m finding ways to paint halos around the people I love — there’s blessings in coming home and watching football with roommates, in the poker game with the homies even as they take all of my money, blessings in the sunny days and the foggy ones. 

I dreamt really hard for the first time in a while and it made me fly and it made me fall. I was blinded by it and now I see more clearly than ever before. It’s not just about a crush, and it never was. Heather Havrilesky of Ask Polly has said that crushes are just a misplaced desire for more from life, and that seems right. This experience was about opening myself up to the belief that there’s more to my life than I thought possible. So I will dream again, even bigger than before, and I will get hurt again, even more than before. And it’ll all be worthwhile.

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💧 Drops of the Week 💧

• PLAYLIST - “mitski if she got ran over by a bus and made happier music” - I don’t really understand the name of this playlist but it’s a fun eclectic mix of genres.

• FILM - Taste of Cherry (1997) - fascinating Iranian story about a man contemplating suicide and told in a beautiful way

• POEM - “Pontius Pilate” by Joseph Fasano - “Forget/the grand design of/ the stars nailing/ the night with a quiet screaming”

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