A big pitfall for me as a writer is that I try too hard for both me and my characters to be liked, which is incredibly shallow and ultimately boring. I put a disclaimer in front of everything saying, "This is what I feel, though you may not and I completely respect that, but this is only what I think...today" instead of just saying, "I miss being part of a social group who meets at Friendlys every Saturday evening." I think Disclaiming is a gender thing. Women don't want to claim their ideas for fear that maybe they'll be wrong and beaten.

So I dreamt of Travis last night. (See May 10th - Good Girls Carry the Heaviest Loads to remember who Travis is) It goes a little like this:

I was at the place of my employment near the fax machine that everyone in the room seemed to be using. There was a stream of people coming in through the main door. They weren't employees, but they were picking up a weekly paycheck or mail or something. One of these people was Travis's mom. I looked at her, looked away, and when I looked back, Travis had come through the door. I tried to look busy at the fax machine to make it look like I had made something out of my life. In my periferal vision I saw him, looking the same as he always had, standing by the mailboxes near the fax machine.

We hugged, gave "cheek kisses" and genuinely said we missed each other in a "you were once my significant other and now I could probably call you my friend if we tried" kind of way.

Riding "home" (I have no idea where home was) in some car was the last part of my realistic-ish dream segment.

Then the dream changed to these images of him sleeping, shirtless and like a kitten, and his mom picking up his rag-doll limp body and carrying him into his room, his head banging on the door and the walls where she wasn't careful enough to avoid.

I remember going out a few days after we'd broken up and he asked if he could still hold my hand. Bitterly I said, of course not. Having coffee and talking, a man openly hit on me in the cafe, which, by the way, has never happened to me before and never since. The flirting did not stop after we had ordered our drinks, but the Random Man came over to our table, asked if we were together, and continued with dialog I forget now. That night is why I believe in Fate.