It was grade two and there he was, my crush, he was my everything. Little did I know that crush was going to extend all through grade school, junior high and into part of high school.

As we aged and time grew on, he was what I “dreamed” I wanted in life as a boyfriend. We talked lots, told jokes, spent lots of time laughing in classes, always sharing my fruit roll ups and here I was watching him be enamoured by this dark haired mean girl. I guess I wasn’t his type, then he moved.

It was only one town away, but in small townland twenty minutes, a half hour, meant you probably would never see them again, except an occasional run in.

My tastes changed, I was growing up and always in my head I spent time comparing people I would meet with this person and still in a sense of idolizing who I “thought” he was. At one point I even dated someone that looking back could have been his doppelgänger. I had a type.

Last night he came back into my dreams and since the accident I seem to be having a lot of playbacks of what certain times of my life consisted of good and bad, memories of people and challenges if I could have a do over, would I?

There I was mesmerized like before “my someone” that I somewhat created in my head over the years. As I met people he became my, let’s call him my loveometer, so I don’t use any names.

In comparison-land people were either not funny enough (I have always loved to laugh), not smart enough (no idea on this one as his marks were never great) or not nice enough (for some reason I deemed him as the nice boy next door).

I would reject people based on these and a few additional items.

Many, many years later I had run into my crush in my adulthood and spent an evening with friends reminiscing of our youth and times that were far behind us.

We laughed alot, told stories of the silly things we had done and then I had finally said I had this crush on you all through school.

The response I received was, I know and I liked you too, but you were too put together, too perfect and very intimidating. You knew what you wanted (I had no clue), what you wanted to become (didn’t complete that path and felt like I was floundering) and the direction you were going (Nope not a clue, most days was flying by the seat of my pants).

Intimidating…..why? I was strong, I was vocal and I could handle life, that’s how he saw me.

By the end of the evening and seeing how this person changed after wobbly pops, it was time to end our kumbayas and return to my world.

He was my “Jake Ryan” of my world (Sixteen Candles), and a nice guy, he even had that fabulous hair.

It’s so interesting how our brains develop, thoughts evolve, we can turn our one thought into something of value at that time and base our entire lives off of it.

I am still working through what was the dream and reminiscing teaching me. Was it my value? Was it how I thought others perceived me?

At this time I am not completely sure, but Mr. Jones and I have some good laughs as we share our memories together and what we were like in our youth.

I am truly grateful for Mr. Jones as we are eight weeks in from this accident and unfortunately there is no timeline on when and if I will fully recover. In the meantime he continues to try to help me find my optimism, as some days he says he has never seen me this beaten down.

Maybe I am just preparing for my next level, my next quest. I turned 50 a few months ago and am sitting here redesigning what that means, what do I think the next 50 years of life will be?

Options are endless….

Love from the dreaming, exploring Women in Process