She's been the one I've been dreaming of, imagining her face as I stared at the ceiling, or looked off into the ocean, hoping it would be that face I'd see at night and the first one I'd see in the morning.

I can dream of her, as I have since we were very young and sometimes every night, and feel her hand in mine, fingers entwined, strands of her hair moving across my face in the breeze from an open window, the sound of crashing waves of the surf just outside mesh with the sound of her soft breathing in my ear, just as I think, "this is it, this is what it is to be alive," the dream fades and her hand in mine devolves like sea foam and I'm again alone.

Talking with her daughter last night about boys and the spring season and life in London and how you should always tell someone you've found yourself falling in love with, The Truth about your feelings, no matter what you think they might say when they respond and how holding those feelings back can ruin your life, and she said, "I know all about that and that's why I told him how I felt."

She's so smart. I wish I had been as mature. I wish I was that mature now. I did learn my lesson. She knows this story. I'm guessing at my age she's heard it too many times. Years of my life were wasted because I didn't tell her mother how I really felt because her rejection would have been too much for me and I have to admit, I was afraid of the intensity of the feelings I had for her. Finding your, "soulmate" when you're so young and so cynical can be troubling. You think, "this can't be right." You might even try to bury those feelings because of that. You might even move on to find yourself involved with lovers that are in no way, "the ones" for you. You might even marry someone because you know you'll never get the right one back, so you just have to move forward and get on with your life. You might even hold back having children because you know you wouldn't want to bring a child into a household where love for the other parent wasn't completely full as your heart really belonged to someone else. You might even find it too late to have children. You might find they have had children with others, and you wish they had been yours because they are so cool, beautiful and smart and everything you'd want your own to be...

And maybe you might wake up one morning and feel their hand in yours, fingers entwined, strands of their hair moving across your face in the breeze from an open window, the sound of crashing waves against the surf just outside mesh with the sound of their soft breathing in your ear, just as you think, "this is it," the dream fades, yet their hand remains in your hand and outside the surf continues crashing and the breeze blows through the open window and you find you are living the dream and you find that, "this is what it is to be alive."

You get to wake up to that beautiful face once again.