Nightmares After Reading Old Love Letters
Ghosts that won’t leave me alone.
My amazing, wonderful, best-human-on-earth boss died during the pandemic. Gerry struggled with cancer for years. It was a loss for all of us that worked with him and all of mankind.
I shared an office with him. Now that our return to office is imminent, my company asked me to make sure my items were fully separated from his before the Facilities folks went in to clear it out for the next employee taking that spot.
It was a relief to go into the office before the doors opened for everyone. I wasn’t sure how I’d react and would rather get teary-eyed when no one was around.
After scouring his desk for the premium alcohol he kept hidden (the Facilities guys told me to take anything good because everything was being trashed), I flop down at my desk and go through my drawers.
It’s been two years since I sat at my desk. I forgot about my USB-heated unicorn slippers and South Park’s Cartman figurine. I spend an hour tossing expired vitamins and gum hidden in crevices. Why did I think I needed a massive bottle of Lysine?
I get to the bottom drawer and I see two envelopes. It takes a moment and then I remember: they’re cards from Jon. We were still together at the start of the pandemic. One is a Valentine’s Day card, another is a birthday card.
A voice in my head tells me to toss them immediately. But my trash can is overflowing and the last thing I need is for someone in Facilities to get nosey. So what do I do? I sit and read them.
In one card, Jon thanks me letting him know that he could feel love “like this” again. There were compliments about my looks and wit. He slid in that I was his “cum slut”, something I told him I loved hearing during sex.
The other card has much of the same love letter-y verbiage. He ended it with a quote he often said: if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.
Despite my robotic and emotionless exterior, I feel things deeply inside. I have a useless ability to be taken back to moments in time, which is currently happening as I sit at my desk. My heart pounds.
Unsure what to do next, I toss the cards back into my desk drawer. I’ll deal with them in a month when I return as part of our new hybrid working model.
After feigning interest in the few coworkers already in the office, I hastily get in my car. I’m not thinking about the cards. My heart misses Gerry and how much I learned from him. On the car ride home, I’m only thinking about my dead boss and the impact he made on my life.
Reading other people’s dreams is the absolute worst. And because I’m an asshole, I’m going to explain the dream I had that evening.
The first half was in a ranch up in the mountains. A friend of mine from high school was supposed to meet me there. It was a corporate-type of event, like a barbecue or team-building activity.
Julie Cooper from The OC was there. Leave it to me to have D-list celebrities make an appearance.
Later, I took my friend and her family to a doctor’s appointment. Except the appointment was with Jon’s girlfriend (she’s also a doctor). In my dream, she looked nothing like the real-life version. She was chubbier but significantly prettier.
Then Jon shows up. The dream version looks identical to the real-life version.
For reasons unknown, I’m shuffled to different rooms in this medical office. My children and my friend’s kids are running around the whole place. The appointment was for my friend but Jon’s girlfriend talked to me instead about whatever nonsensical health issues one discusses in a dream.
Even in my dream, I was distraught seeing both of them.
That’s all I remember.
I woke up upset. When dreams are realistic, you wake up believing they actually happened. You’re discombobulated and confused. Even worse, the feelings from your dream carry over into real life.
It’s my own fault. I read his cards. It makes sense they’d linger in the back of my mind before bed. But now I feel like I’m breaking up all over again.
This is absurd. It’s been years. There is zero chance this kind of shit is happening to him and yet, here I am still experiencing breakup anxiety like it was yesterday. It makes me feel pathetic and desperate.
Don’t get me started on Julie Cooper’s appearance. I haven’t watched The OC since it ended over a decade ago. If I’m going to have a nightmare about an ex-boyfriend, could I at least get a cameo from Jonathan Bailey or Taylor Swift?
C’mon Dream Weaver, hook me up next time.
