I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair

But her name's Mindi. And her hair is blonde.

Everybody has their regrets. Things they should have done, things they shouldn't have done, words they wish they could take back, decisions they wish they'd never made. It's a part of being human. In a way we're all William Katt, standing in the California desert of our minds with this amazing life but no instruction manual.

But that's OK. We learn from these mistakes. We grow and change and find our new opportunities wherever we can, even though the path we end up on may not be the one we had imagined. In whatever way we can, we make our peace with these things, and then we get on with our lives. We go forward because there's no going back. And besides, time heals all wounds, right?

Bullshit. It heals a hell of a lot of them - but almost eleven years' worth of water has gone under the bridge since I lost the girl I truly should have married, and she still haunts my dreams.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not one of those miserable people who spend the rest of their lives utterly dwelling on one mistake, letting it get in the way of everything else they could have accomplished after that. True, I compare every single girl I meet to her, but I haven't let that get in the way of actually having meaningful relationships.  I don't lie in bed awake at night driving myself crazy with thoughts of what might/should have been.  Well, OK, the vast majority of the time I don't.  I think of her often - of course I do, we loved each other truly, deeply, madly, and passionately - but I don't let that rule my life.  I still live.  I still love.  These things happen.  Overcoming adversity is part and parcel of life on this planet.

But my subconscious? Ah, that's another story entirely. At least once every 6 weeks or so, I lose her all over again, and I wake up miserable. They're never dreams of things that actually happened - those would be easier to deal with, I imagine. No, it's always something different. Sometimes we find each other again after years have gone by, and then she dies. Sometimes I do. Sometimes we're together and she leaves me for someone else. Sometimes she's moving away to somewhere I can't follow. My brain has cooked up a seemingly endless array of scenarios over the past eleven years, but the setting isn't the important thing anyway - it's the sense of loss I feel on waking, the one that follows me around like a cloud of Pigpen stink for the rest of the morning.

I absofuckinglutely hate it.

Sure, there are good dreams too.  A little too good sometimes, if you know what I mean... but that's not the point.  So.  How do you get over something like that?  How do you make peace with something that your mind is telling you it's already made all the peace it's possible to make with? Am I supposed to just deal with this for the rest of my life? I loved Stef with all my heart, but in all the years we were together the dreams of Mindi never stopped. So what happens when and if love finds me again? Do I tell the girl, and make her worry that I love a freakin' ghost from my past more than I do her - or keep it to myself and wake up regularly feeling not only miserable, but unfaithful to boot? How do you put something behind you when it's already there?

Grr. And sigh. I'm going to go kill some stuff until I feel better.