Those of you who know me know that I hardly ever have bad dreams. My nightmares are few and years between them. The last one I had was at my aunt’s place in Ohio, three weeks ago. I’d dreamed that someone was chasing me and wanted to hurt me very badly. The one before that was at PsiU, where I dreamed that Larry had shot himself, and the one before that was a decade before, when I was 12, in which I’d dreamed that someone had shot Megan in a grocery store. Last night added itself into the nightmare category, the dreams that I always remember. I woke this morning panting, a whimper on my lips, tears at the corners of my eyes, and a sick pain in my gut as if I’d been sobbing for hours. In my dream, I had been. I dreamed that John had told me “I think we should.. see other people.” He left me then, as I stared in utter shock and the tears began to trickle down my face. Suddenly, it was three weeks later, and I still had not seen him since that day. Brian drove up and told me that John was renting a place somewhere, and that I wasn’t supposed to know, because John thought I’d drive over uninvited. In my dream, I screamed an unearthly scream of someone who has just been driven quite mad, and it was the moan that escaped my lips that woke me. As I lay there, comprehending the fact that it was just a dream, the doubts started to creep in on my sleep-weak mind. I wondered to myself if it had really been a dream, or if I’d just forgotten that John doesn’t love me anymore. I glanced to the phone, but I was too scared to call him, just in case he really didn’t want to ever see me again. I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. My front mind told me it was just a dream, but the back of my head showed me the horror what it felt like, over and over. As I lay there in tears, trying to get a control on my panic, I realized something else. I know now what it’s like for a close friend of mine. I know he wakes with panted breaths and tears in his eyes, and it never gets any better, because he dreams the opposite, and wakes to the awful. I cried then for him, because I never would wish things like that on my enemy, much less one of the dearest friends I have. The knowing is worse, because I know also that I can’t help.