Saturday, August 28, 2010

I remember the very first psychic dream I ever had. It's almost like the memory of a first kiss. Something you imagine or anticipate, the event nearly seems impossible until you arrive there in the dark, witnessing it with your own lips, your own inner eye. I remember now when it all started happening. It was right around my 18th birthday. For over a year, I’d had a somewhat steady boyfriend, Ben. In hindsight, I suppose I didn’t love him in a raw passionate, uncontrollably ferocious, thoroughly loving kind of way, but I did care about him dearly and affectionately. His confidence is what I remember the most about him, he had a balanced confidence that I lacked. Perhaps that's why I was drawn to him. He used to call me his "little girl." They all call me that, I don't know why, like I'm some kind of fucking childish house pet. I'm not so little and I'm not so girlish. I don't shop like a girl, I don't know that I even have sex like a typical girl, I'm not overly committed to my feminine side. I'm just a lean, mean, spirit machine. Well, maybe I'm not so mean.

So in the midst of my senior year in high school, I went away on a ski trip to Sugar Mountain with my family to celebrate my birthday, leaving my boyfriend alone for only a matter of days. While I was on my vacation, far up in the forest in the sky, the dream came to me. I saw Ben having sex with his ex girlfriend. It was all too clear and unobstructed. I remember it so perfectly and wholly because it’s the kind of dream you don’t want to be true. Yet there he was, romping around with another woman in plain lucid view.
I woke up in partial shock and shook my head, “Ben would never do that.” I assured myself. But the images of the dream refused to abandon my memory, they ate away at me, forcing me to ask questions and doubt the foundation of my relationship with Ben.

I enjoyed the ski trip, I remember praying and connecting to God in a way I never had before. Snowy retreats will do that to a person. Everything was going so smoothly, I felt refreshed and ready to start the rest of my life and grow into the woman heaven meant me to be. But the dream of Ben's betrayal continued to gnaw at me. As soon as I returned home, I immediately phoned Ben. The conversation got off to a very wobbly and unsettling start. He asked polite questions about my family and the ski trip, but the energy on the receiver was far less than optimistic and glad. In his odd silence, I mentioned the dream.
“Ben I had this bizarre dream, I saw you sleeping with your ex girlfriend, I mean you had sex with her in the dream.” I began steadily. “Did you see Mandy while I was away?”
“What? Mandy? No.” He stuttered and fell quiet again. He took a heavy breath and then said, “But Jessi I’m coming over to your house, I have to talk to you.”

Within 20 minutes Ben was there. I was so happy to see him. My happiness was fleetingly short lived. I tossed my arms around him and tried to hug him, but he gently pushed me away and buried his caveman like head in his hands.
“I can’t do this, I have to tell you.” His eyes began to well up. “I didn’t sleep with Mandy, but I did sleep with another girl while you were away, your dream was right Jessi, I cheated on you. I didn’t do it to hurt you, but I have to man up about it and tell you directly now. I thought about not telling you, but I feel so guilty, you're a good girl, you did not deserve for me to cheat on you.”

I gasped and felt waves of horror and disappointment bash my insides. My future with him began to crumble. I didn’t want to be angry at all. There was no anger, there was only compassion. I tried to set it right and without taking a breath, I forgave him instantly, right then, I forgave him and told him we could work it out. He shook his head and told me he was leaving me for the other girl. I knew what the other girl was doing, the psychic, "all knowing" ability had begun to function while I was awake too. I knew the every detail of what had gone down.

Ben was bragging to the other girl about me. He was telling her what a beautiful, wonderful, and sweet girlfriend I was. He was always saying things like that to people and bragging about me. That’s one of the reasons I loved our relationship. The other girl saw it as a challenge. She did not give a fuck about Ben, she just looked at him as some kind of conquest, she was only drawn to him because he was mine and unavailable. So they both got further drunk at the party they had met at and then she took advantage of the fact I was out of town and he was there alone. If I’d had been in town, I would have been at that party with him. She was just using him to give herself an ego shot, she wanted to prove to herself that she was pretty enough to steal someone else’s boyfriend away. She wanted Ben to talk about her the way he’d just rambled on about me.

The better woman floundering within me wanted to tell him everything and demand he grow some sense and see straight, look at the bigger and more logical picture here. At least try to see through the tempting lust she had gotten him stoned on. I didn’t though. I let him cry on my shoulder and soon he told me he had to go. I didn’t try to resist or plead with him after that. Moments later, we said a peaceful goodbye and he walked out the door and then I was alone with the accuracy of the dream. It seemed so harmless; the tiny, telling dream. But after years of dreaming the truth, after so many insights that originated in my head and then snowballed into uncut life before my eyes, I can see how a single dream about a disloyal boyfriend would set the tone for the rest of my life.

Ben went on to get the girl pregnant. He married her soon after. As I had predicted, she was just trying to validate herself and did not care a lick about him for the right reasons. After the baby was born, she cheated on Ben. They were divorced within a year. Afterwards, Ben tracked me down, apologized all over again and admitted that he'd made a huge mistake and he still loved me. By then, it was too late, I had moved on.

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