Uninvited Dreams

It was supposed to rain today. It used to do every time I met him. He always came to me drenched in rain, smiling with his devouring eyes. The same smile that brought us closer eight years ago. I don't want to start with a flashback as I don't want to be swayed today. I know it's a mistake to meet your ex after all these years, but I convinced myself that it was over and now we were just two people living their own busy lives. There was no sign of rain and the sun was shining brightly, making it the hottest day of the year. I saw him walking towards me. He was wearing his usual black shirt with black jeans, the combination that I hated most back in the day. But now, it doesn't matter. The way he gets dressed, the colour of his shirt, the tone in which he speaks, the "hmm", and "ok" replies that he sends to my messages, his silence; nothing really matters now. I think this is how "moving on" works. You no longer like or hate anything about your ex because it's not your business anymore. But it just took seconds for me to realize this is "not" how moving on works. He cooked up a storm inside me by just smiling at me. To his smile, the sixteen-year-old inside me giggled while the twenty-four-year-old struggled to keep her sigma mode on. All my emotions went crazy and I stood helplessly smiling back at him as he came closer and hugged me softly for the first time.

                       I could feel the deeply buried pain resurfacing as I woke up from the dream. My eyes started pouring over how much I missed the scent of someone who became a stranger long ago. This is not the way I wanted my life to be. I wanted to move on, which I thought I did. I long to be happy, guilt-free with no regrets, break my walls of self-blame and self-hate and come out to live for myself. And I thought I was doing fine until I started seeing him in my dreams. I am back to those days when I crave his messages and nights, I wish to hear his voice. Sometimes, I couldn't resist my urge to run over to the street and watch him pass on his loud noisy bullet. I miss how he looked at me by scanning the background to ensure we weren't caught. After our breakup, it took time to digest all his memories, bury them deep inside and finally move on. Today, at five in the morning, I am sitting on my bed, weeping like a child for someone who is now a complete stranger to me. I don't know where he is, with whom he is, or if he is even alive or not. Not even a clue! Yet for some stranger, I am messing up my post-breakup routines and his memories are teasing my three-year-old strict moving-on resolutions. Now, I am just a clueless woman lying on the bed looking at the ceiling…