There's this girl that I keep dreaming about, day after day after day. I haven't seen her in the flesh since just before Christmas 2013, over a year ago. I was in Marks and Spencer in Croydon with my pal Lucie, she was buying presents and hangover remedies (it was a booze-fest-christmas) and as I was walking to find Lucie, I saw this girl. She was taller than I remember, an inch more than me?, and she made me feel so tiny and small. And not because of just her height, but because her presence, there, ad hoc, in the Marks and Spencer in Croydon was a shock. And because she was a bigger person than me, bigger and better. And she made me feel much smaller, because I was shocked to see her. I saw her standing here and froze, instantly shrinking at the same rate that she was growing. Time froze for a short while, she clocked me and I clocked her, then I spotted her mum, remembered to breathe and walked on by, leaving those moments behind. For the rest of the day I was checking over my shoulder, when Lucie and I were in the queue I checked for her presence. Where had she gone? I never found out. Lucie and I left, my hands shaking as I helped her pack her shopping, still shaking when we left the store. So that was the last time I saw her.
It's a year later now and lots has happened, I properly broke up with the girlfriend I was breaking up with at the time, I dated someone new, I broke up with them, I slept with my former girlfriend in a dusty alleyway, drunk, rekindled another previous relationship briefly, had a relationship changing argument with Lucie and moved back in with my parents. And occasionally, over the past 14 months, I've been dreaming about the girl. I couldn't even tell you what she looked like that day in Marks & Spencer, I think perhaps she had died her hair slightly, a deeper shade of red. Perhaps she was wearing a blue coat? But her features, face, hands, body. I could tell you nothing specific.
And in my dreams sometimes she wears cream jackets and has strawberry blonde hair, on the blonde side of strawberry. Sometimes it's pulled back into ponytails. Other times she's there as I do remember her, freckles blazed across her face, duck pout, those beautiful eyes and long, flowing hair. In other dreams she has no face or distinguishing fingers, I just know that it is her, and that we are in the same place, doing the same thing.
And sometimes she kisses me, sometimes she smiles at me in the way that means that we're an official couple. Sometimes she's somewhere else where I can't see her, but I know she's there. Sometimes her mum is there and gives us a romanic blessing, congratulates me on our relationship. I thank her. Cheers, Viv. Sometimes I look at her from across a room or see her at a party and we don't speak, but I see her and I look at her and feel her presence.
And when she's in my dreams I feel all of the feelings I have felt for every girl ever simultaneously for her. And dream feelings are worse than real feelings, because they feel real and more important, they feel like they are the only things that exist. And maybe when I look at her in my dreams and feel all of those feelings I am feeling everything I have ever felt for her and everyone else who has got away. As she is the symbol, the figure, emblem, sign of getting away. She was the first, middle, and last. Because as the first, she will always be the last, as every feeling of abandonment will go back to her, and back to the way I felt about her.
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