When The People We Dream About Don’t Dream About Us

Anatol Lem

We remember everything they tell us. We remember all their details more than we remember our own. We remember the things that they probably forgot they once said but we remember because we’re listening, because we’re paying attention, because we’re studying everything about them as they speak. But they barely remember what we said, they vaguely remember what we talked about. They don’t pay attention because we’re not on their list of priorities. We’re not the ones they want.

They make us happy. We want to see them and talk to them. We want to tell them about our day. We want to invite them everywhere we go. We want to show them off to the world. But they keep us away from everyone else. They don’t look forward to our next date or our next conversation. They don’t want us to be involved in their lives because we don’t move their world they way they move ours. We don’t give them the same euphoric feeling they give us.

And that’s the irony of love. Sometimes the people we dream about don’t dream about us. Sometimes the people we could give up everything for don’t even lift a finger for us. Sometimes they leave before we’re ready to let them go. Sometimes they find in us everything beautiful but they don’t find love.

The truth is, the people we love are not always right for us. We don’t always end up with them. We don’t always win their hearts no matter how hard we fight for their love. They don’t always meet us half-way. They don’t always see what we see. They don’t give us the chance we deserve.

We’re not their dream and maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s God’s way of telling us to dream bigger. That this dream is not right for us. That we’re living someone else’s dream and we need to wake up.

And that’s the irony of love. We could blindly fight for the wrong people. We could stubbornly cling to those who don’t want us. We could foolishly believe that we could turn unrequited love into forever. We stay in the wrong dream until we turn it into a nightmare.

Sometimes the people we dream about don’t dream about us because they’re dreaming about other people and there’s nothing we can do to change that. But one thing I know for sure is that we can always wake up from the wrong dream. It doesn’t have to be the reality we keep on living. It doesn’t have to be our story.

And one thing I know for sure, no matter how broken we are — we, at the very least — deserve someone who dreams about us too . Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Writing makes me feel alive. Words heal me.

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