I dreamed of you again last night.

If there are alternate realities, different dimensions in time, that’s where we meet.

We meet, me knowing we have been parted for some time. But it’s a hopeful feeling. I watch you, watch for the agitation brought on by those hurts you never seemed able to heal. Those hurts that hardened you against some of us who loved you, turning on us to expel your frustrations, the unfairness of the world you carried deep deep.

In my dream, I don’t see that angsty part of you surfacing, but I am wary–still walking on eggshells, keeping a slight distance. Watching.

I feel peace from you, between us. But still I am careful. There’s been too much pain to trust entirely.

This time you had bought a rambling house that needed renovation and love and attention. I wander through it exploring the rooms, seeing the small things left behind here and there on shelves. I look at the front wall of the living room and see a huge built-in bookcase like the kind libraries use for children’s books, covers facing out. It’s empty now, but I love the library ambience of this wall made for books. Books are a good omen.

In our real dimension, I don’t know why you pushed my things further and further into hidden spaces, while you took more and more space. In that dimension, maybe I should have pushed back more. But I was raised to Not Be A Bother, so I got rid of my books, my hobbies, shoving them further into darker corners.

In this dream space, seeing the large bookcase in the living room makes me smile. My books are welcome here! I say to myself.

I am hopeful. I feel I may be accepted in this house. I may be invited to truly share space, to live without fear of emotional annihilation. I feel no anger burning toward me.

I walk through the house, looking at the rooms, wondering at the previous lives lived in this space. Were there children? Certainly the space and number of rooms would be perfect for them.

I grow calmer as the energy in the house remains friendly. You voice thoughts about the improvements you want to make. That much is the same in both dimensions–our married life and my dream realm–your brain was always assessing a space and thinking how it could work better, be better. Should this wall be moved, that window?

In my dream I am no longer wondering why you bought this house in particular, I am looking at the way the light comes through the windows, checking the size of the closets, and saying to myself This house has good bones.

I feel a calmness in you, from you, and I feel a gentle hope.

And in my awake life I am sad–sad that your earlier hurts left such lasting marks that hurting us was your best defense. Sad that you never got to live in peace with yourself and others on this earth.

Does this peace I feel from you in this other dimension mean that where you are now that your life here is over, you are feeling peace?

Next weekend marks ten years since I “ran away from home,” exhausted and afraid. I needed safety, I needed peace.

I hold onto this hope–that you have finally reached peace where you are, like I have in my own life here.