I lifted my head and woke up to find I had been dozing on cement steps flush against some sort of old-style movie studio type of building. There was a black metal railing on the side. It didn't seem odd to me I'd woken up there; I knew I'd dozed off there after a good, crazy, eventful night.

The sun hit my eyes, very-early-morning bright. And he was standing there, a few yards from me, but different. We were both different; in our late 20s, felt like; but it was us. I was wearing a vintage 1940's swing-era kind of dress--one with a tailor-fitted top, cinched waist, and wider skirt. My dark hair was loose and tousled from sleeping outside. I could feel the morning breeze against it. And him--he had his back to me, but I could tell it was him. It looked like him, though younger. But his hair was '70s long and fine and very, very blond, a way I'd never seen it in life. I could see his hair swinging, reflecting sunlight as he moved.

I realized he was holding a paintbrush, and motioning with it urgently. He was finishing painting a big sign, hurrying. My eyes tried to focus in the light.

I pushed myself up on the steps and looked around, blinking. The city we were in was one I'd been to before. It is a city of billboards; they pepper hills and highways all over town. And I realized suddenly that something about them had changed. Every billboard had been painted over in white. And then there were black letters painted on top of the white backgrounds.

I scanned the skyline. Everyplace I turned there was a new billboard, covered in this writing. I read and read. They said amazing things. Secrets. Things that only I could understand; things that spoke straight to my heart; moved it with some strange, undefinable emotion; something deeper and more primeval even than love. Love--that was a child's toy; a rough simulation of this. This...this was something different; older. That thing you know you're searching for but can't really get to. The middle of the black hole. The end of pi. It was that, but a feeling. There is no other way to describe it.

It is that thing you know, but that you are certain no one else knows, because even you can't put it into words.

And now it was on billboards all over the city. I was stunned.

And then, I looked back down and he was standing just a few feet in front of me, facing me. A thick paintbrush covered in black paint hung limply at his side. He seemed slightly out of breath, anxious. The air was still, waiting. He looked at me. Straight at me. He looked anxious, almost pleading, like he desperately wanted me to understand something.

"I did it for you," he said.

And then suddenly, reality tore into me like a knife slashing through canvas. I woke up, but this time I was no longer on cement steps.

A few days ago, I dreamed about you. Something I haven't done in so long that I can't even remember the last time I did.

In the dream, we were in an English country house. There was a gathering of old friends there from back when we'd all lived in the same city. All of us were our current ages; it was some kind of casual reunion after many years, like they show in movies, where all the old friends come to stay for a week in some charming old place and everyone sits around and reminisces and laughs.

You were there with your wife. A woman whose name I've included on holiday greetings I've sent to you, and whom I've heard about from others, but whom I've never actually met or spoken to in person. In the dream, I'd been introduced to her, and in the midst of the crowd in the kitchen, I was trying, as I always do when meeting the partner of an ex-boyfriend, to bond with her and make her feel at home with and unthreatened by me. I was being casually friendly, showing an interest in her, to the point of even showing more interest in her than I was showing in catching up with you. To give her the feeling of security; allow her to know me and to relax, to show I respected her position and nothing weird was going to happen. Which, in the dream, was fully how I believed and wanted it to be.

But it was odd to see you after so many years, and after so much silence had passed between us. I knew through others you felt uncomfortable and ashamed of certain things you'd done in relation to me, though I'd let go of them a long time ago. I could feel you watching me, nervous, uncomfortable, trying to sound out my feelings for you now that you had to face me in person. I smiled at you occasionally for reassurance that I was fine and continued to chat with your wife while you silently stood by, nervously looking for small ways to make it appear like you were concentrating on the conversation. And yet I could also tell you very badly wanted to talk to me. I knew this because even now I still know you well enough to sense when something's off for you, and I could feel you sending me signals. The feeling in the air coming from you, though unfelt by the others, was...agitated. But while I was there with everyone else, I chose to pretend I couldn't feel this and everything was normal. I tried to decide whether or not that was how I would play it for the rest of the vacation, and figured I'd just see what happened and how I felt.

Then, suddenly, the dream shifted and I was in an upstairs room by myself, unpacking my things. You came in, pretending to be curious about what the room was like, and stayed as I unpacked, attempting small talk and looking nervous, anxious. I small talked back in a friendly, polite way. I remember feeling that perhaps I hadn't made enough positive contact with your wife yet for her to feel comfortable with you being alone with me in a room, and breaking through the chit-chat to be direct like we used to be once-upon-a-time, I told you this. I suggested maybe we wait to talk alone until she got more comfortable first.

When I suggested that maybe you should leave, you started to cry, and sat down on the floor as if you'd run out of the strength and energy to stand up and act fine for one minute longer. It shocked me. I'm not sure I've ever seen you cry in the whole time I've known you. Concerned, I came over and sat next to you on the floor. I touched your arm gently, and asked if you were okay. You told me, your voice breaking, that you were very, very unhappy. That you and your wife were having problems. That your life was not what you had hoped. That nothing was the way you'd imagined it would be back when we'd known each other, when we still had time to dream about being adults. That you'd become someone you didn't even recognize or understand. That you'd become the type of person who, back when you knew me, you used to speak of with disdain. As you went on, you hid your face on my shoulder to hide how miserable you looked, and how ashamed you were of what you were saying. I sensed you were afraid to look at me and see what I saw in you.

It was very sad. I understood; I knew how that felt. And it broke my heart that you of all people should have to feel it. I suppose I thought I'd carried it for both of us. I realized, sitting there, watching you cry, that I'd been wrong.

And suddenly I was overcome by an overwhelming feeling of tenderness for you--a deep, limitless, unchecked well of affectionate love that I hadn't remembered I was ever capable of feeling. I lifted up your head gently with my hands and you looked at me, hoping. Hoping to break through everything that had happened and bring back into the familiar understanding we'd always had. Hoping to be understood. Hoping for me to tell you it was okay, that there was still time, so that you could believe it was true. Your eyes were begging me. Do you still remember me? Can you still see me? Am I still there?

I kissed your cheek, near to the mouth, but carefully not on it, even though it drew me. I kissed you where your tears were, one cheek and then the other, lightly. And then I looked straight into your eyes and I said gently and firmly, I recognize you. I recognize you. And your eyes welled with tears. And I kept looking at you and caressing your face and I told you I'd promised you I would always love you, and you were still you, so I loved you now.

And you kept your hands on my arms like you were afraid if you let go that I wouldn't be real anymore. And you wouldn't take your eyes off my face, gazing at me like a child being nursed, and then you tried to softly kiss me on the mouth, and I let you for a brief moment, just so I could remember what your mouth felt like, how lovely and soft and matched to mine. And a part of me yearned to move towards even more, but the other part thought, this has to be water under the bridge. That things had changed so much since that time so long ago, and so many choices made, that simply loving each other in a way that touched places in us no others had been able to was no longer all there was, and so it no could longer mean the same things.

And we could both feel in how tentatively we touched each other that this was true, but it was also true was that it felt good to know it was still there.

And the dream faded out with us still holding each other, gazing at each other's faces. Faces that had some signs of age but whose eyes still, still, still knew each other so well. It faded out out with us still lightly touching each other's arms and shoulders, knowing we'd have to pull apart again soon, any moment now, but not quite ready to do it.

And then I woke up. And through the rest of the day I felt a profound sadness and longing. Because the dream had been more vivid than any dream I'd had in years. So vivid that I could remember the actual feel of your arm as I touched you, and the smell of you next to me, as if I were right there. I could taste your tears as I kissed them. I could hear your voice. Feel the warmth of your hands on my shoulders. I didn't even know I still had enough memory of you left to remember what those things felt like. But there they were, and I was experiencing them again as if I'd never left you.

And worse, I felt that feeling of tenderness for you, a level of unchecked emotion I'd forgotten how to feel. And I realized since you that I've never felt that for anyone else. How unbruised my heart was at that time, how open to loving you I was. How completely and utterly satisfied I was in who you were, and how utterly ready I felt to offer you my heart, the minute you'd have asked. How romantic I was over you.

And the ironic thing is that while I felt all that for you, and while in the dream I told you that I'd promised you I'd always love you, in real life, I never said any such thing to you. I'd never told you I was in love with you, let alone that I always would. I never said any of that to you--instead I said it to many other men after you. Men for whom my feelings were a pale reflection of what I actually did feel about you.

So, you know what I think, _______? I think it's time we just fucking said it. I think I was in love with you. And I think you were in love with me. And I think you never told me you were because you didn't want to be in love with someone who was so much like you, because you hated you. And I think I didn't tell you because I knew you didn't want to be in love with someone like me, who was so much like you, someone who you wished was different. "Better" than you. I let you have that feeling, even though it hurt. I didn't intrude or insist. Because I wished I was different, too. How could I blame you for feeling the same? In the end, I think it was easier for us both to believe we were inferior than to believe we had something transcendent. Than to believe we were both okay the way we were. That we were enough, individually and together.

I wanted just once to be able to say that to you out loud, without shame or fear. It's time.

And, from where I am now, I want to say I'm sorry we felt that way about ourselves. That we allowed ourselves to be cheated of so much for so long because of it.

And I hope, my dear, dear friend, despite having not talked to you for so long, and despite having heard some things that make me fear otherwise, I hope that you aren't as miserable as you were in my dream. I hope it's going okay. But if it's not, I want to tell you I understand, deeply and fully. And I want to tell you, even though we may never speak in real life again, that after all these years I'm actually learning how to be enough for myself. Learning how to believe it's actually true. And I'm learning to admit I that I was in love with you; and that with you, I did know what it felt like to love someone without conditions. I'm learning to recognize and admit that after you I was never able to really feel that love for anyone else so far. And I'm ready to release that into the world and not be ashamed that I did feel that way, despite my being too afraid to do so at the time we were together, and long, long after. I'm ready to realize that my heart isn't dead or incapable of love, that it did once feel real love for someone--I just let it get shut down in the lost hope of us for a while. But I'm ready to accept that if it was capable of feeling it once, it can feel it again. And I'm learning that none of this is anything to be ashamed of. I'm learning that there is no "inferior" or "better" other than the ones I choose to make up in my head.

I want you to know it's not too late for these things. That there's always time, there's always hope. That dreams have no expiration date.

That love is not a weakness.

I want you to know it's possible to not be ashamed or afraid to admit we love ourselves despite lack of perfection. Or that we loved and still love each other.

I want you to know that you were the great love of my life so far, and I thank you for that, and for giving as much as you were capable of at the time. And I want you to know I release you from anything else you were incapable of giving at that time.

I want to say goodbye, my dearest friend.

And I want to say that I believe what I said in the dream was true. As long as I am, I will always love you. And I will always recognize you. Always.