WHY is he haunting my dreams?

i keep having dreams about my middle school crush. i haven't seen him since graduating 8th grade— we went to different high schools and we weren't friends so we didn't stay in touch.

friendly, but not friends.

i really, really liked him. he was cute, a little shy, funny, popular. almost all the girls (but especially the popular girls) had a crush on him or one of his 2 best friends. they were referred to by these girls by code names: snap, crackle, and pop. this boy was crackle because he was blond. how funny. the redhead, the blond, and the brunet. just like the cereal elves. clever kids. rofl ex dee!

"crackle" was the nice one of the trio. we shared snacks with each other (when i found out that he also ate raw ramen noodles straight out of the package it was like i'd found my person). he loved abba (oh, i'd really found my person!). i made a facebook account just so i could friend him, and he was the inspiration for my password. a password i still use to this day, albeit a variation of it. we got braces around the same time, too. so, you know, it had to be meant to be.

snap, the redhead, punched me in the nose during a book fair once. for no discernible reason. i was just standing there at a display, he was standing across from me, and BAM! fist to the face. not very hard. my nose didn't bleed. i just stood there. and he just stood there.

pop, the brunet, threw a ball across the gym and nailed me square in the face with it during a free day toward the end of the year. knocked my glasses off. i had a small bruise from that one.

why the fuck was i such a tail-tucking, hand-licking, submissive and pathetic little whelp? why didn't i bite back? i didn't even bark! BARK, you scrappy little thing! sic 'em! GAH!

i only knew how to roll over.

"crackle" never said anything to his buddies. not in front of me, anyways. he wasn't a bully like them but that doesn't mean that he cared.

or maybe he was like me— another pushover. another conflict-avoidant, nervous dog.

i won't lie. i've looked him up, just to see how he's doing, if he's still living in the area. he has a twitter account but i'm not signing up for that cesspool just to potentially get in contact with a guy i haven't spoken to in 16 years. i mean it. i won't.

(don't fucking do it, chain.)

i never confessed my feelings to him but i didn't have to. it was obvious. i'm awkward as fuck. socially stunted. i don't think i knew how to mask back then. i followed him around like a duckling. i was always trying to spend time with or around him at school. fuck, i even looked up his address and told him i knew where he lived (stupid dog. come on!)... yeowch. it was innocent enough, but... yeah, that probably creeped him out.

still, he put up with me. he was nice to me. he didn't go out of his way to hang out with me, but he was friendly.

and that's all.

so why do i keep dreaming about him?

in my dreams, all we do is hang out, or just have a chat in passing. i don't recall having any sexual dreams involving him. in my dreams, sometimes he lives just down the street from my mom, or sometimes he lives in the general area that he actually lived back in school. his house is always white. sometimes i go inside but i can't recall what the interior looks like.

bright blue eyes, freckles, not much taller than me, soft voice. that's how i remember him and that's how he is in my dreams. he's grown up and we talk like grown ups reminiscing on childhood, but on the outside he still looks like that 13, 14 year old boy. because my brain can't fill in those blanks on its own. it says, "here he is as you know him and will forever know him. just a boy."

why do i want to talk to him so badly?!

why do i want to know him, and have him know me? why do i want to tell him, "remember me? well this is what i am now. weird, right? are you surprised? maybe not, i always was weird after all, wasn't i? or maybe you don't care? 'who is this freak'? anyway, want to be friends?"

why do i miss him? we weren't friends! we weren't! he was nice to me and i was obsessed with him, but we weren't friends!

i hardly knew him and he hardly knew me and i don't think he truly cared to get to know me. so why do i feel like i'm missing a friend? i barely even think about it during the day. during the day, when i'm awake, he's just another part of my past. mostly neutral.

then i sleep, and he's at the center of my thoughts! why?! is there some... closure that i need? why do i feel that connection to this guy that i don't know? is there something i recognize in him, subconsciously? or is it something that i desperately want to be there, but isn't?

on an old youtube account, i had videos of him: two of him playing piano, one of him racing somebody on one of those inflatable obstacles courses, all during the post-graduation lockdown before our class trip. memories to keep of a boy i liked.

at some point recently i managed to access that account, and i deleted the videos. he knew i uploaded them originally, because i sent him the links after i did it. but after all these years, it felt... weird. to keep them up. i don't know. so i deleted them.

i regret doing that.

regret. is that what this is all about? regret for my behavior? regret for not just telling him how i felt, when it was so obvious anyway? regret for being such a wuss? regret for not keeping in contact with him?

...i'm not convinced. i regret a lot of things in my life that i don't dream about.

grief?

now there's something with substance.

grief over a relationship that never got to happen. grief over an awkward, ostracized, friendless adolescence. grief over a boy i felt such an affinity for but was too other to be friends with.

and want. i can't deny it. i wanted him. i want him— not carnally— i want to reclaim a fraction of my childhood. i want control over the past. i want a different past. i want...

but still. why him? he was a rare crush, but not my only crush. he isn't the only person i miss from around that time. i guess, obviously, he was something bigger. i mean, i do sometimes have dreams about my best friend that i met in 6th grade. but we still talk sometimes, we're still close, though not like we were in school. i have dreams about my favorite teachers, and i wish i could go visit them. they wouldn't remember me by this point, i'm sure. or, i don't know, maybe they would. but when i dream about that damn boy, i feel. really feel. feel what? split me open and find out, because i don't know. a lot. too much.

so what is it?

why you?

stupid fucking cereal boy, what the fuck.

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