Falling in love with a dream
The friendship that had led us into falling in love gradually has filled all the empty spaces.

July 7, 2005
iranian.com

Imagine falling in love with a cartoon character. Imagine then rejecting all other offers of relationship because nobody lives up to your ideal. "It's one thing to hold out for the very best that you can get. It's another thing to reject a pretty much perfect proposition because you are so enraptured by an entirely unobtainable fantasy", said he who proposed. Pretty full of himself, I would say.

So far, so good. So wise. So obvious. I thought to myself. The trouble is, we don't always realise when we are chasing rainbows. It wasn't as if the voice in my head wasn't repeatedly saying, "Think again about your great dream. Can it really ever be a reality?"

Imagine looking through a kaleidoscope, spotting a most beautiful pattern and then becoming deeply upset because it has gone, and you may never see it again. Well that was me! "You have to be in the moment. You have to enjoy what's before you while it is there and trust that what's coming up next, though it may be different, will be of equal value and beauty", said the other voice in my head.

Everywhere I turned my head I could hear something, but deep down, I knew what I wanted. Logic had no place in my planet.

It was as if something was moving on in my world. And I knew it was time to let go. I was convinced something else is ready to arrive. I so badly wanted to embrace it.

"Time is your friend, not your enemy", said M in one of the sessions I had with him. Yes I did believe I am going mad hence M came to my life. For a therapist he was quite good, he just sat there and listened and sometimes the only things that he said was a word of wisdom and then the time was up. Of course I kept an itsy bitsy part of the problem away from him, perhaps that is why he looked baffled all the time; he was missing a piece of the puzzle. My cartoon character had no part in his notes. I wasn't sure how to tell him, I wasn't sure how to convince myself on how I feel.

Time is your friend, not your enemy. That for sure was true. I just needed to be patient. I just had to make a decision and once I had made sure that is what I want, I would wait.

You see, maybe I am misleading you here. I wasn't really in love with Bugs Bunny or Tweedy, that was a metaphor. No really I hadn't gone mad. I fell in love with someone so far away, a dream so far fetched that everyone including my mother had lost faith. Maybe they were right; maybe I fell in love with a dream. But guess what: my dream came true.

Time after all was my friend. Just when I was loosing faith, just when I was so close to being shattered into pieces, he came. There we were standing side by side in the arrival lounge of a busy airport. And as he embraced me in his arms I thought of all the things people said and smiled. I didn't care what anyone thought. The friendship that had led us into falling in love gradually has filled all the empty spaces. I was happy.

You see, people are not always very nice to each other. They make harsh judgements and sharp criticisms. They say one thing in public and another in private. They play tricks and set each other traps. They... well, I needn't go on. You know what I am talking about. Do you also know, though, how wonderful some people can be? And how kind, how unselfish, how giving and how loving?

Eight months later, when we looked up at each other to give our marriage vows, what people said had no place in my mind, as though I had never heard them. That day seeing his smile -- as he heard me say 'I do' -- meant the world to me. I was complete. I was fulfilled with the joy I had always dreamt of.

The day I wore a white dress and walked side by side with him, the world was our oyster and nothing could take away our hard-earned well-deserved happiness.