The End of a Dream

There comes a time in everyone's life when we must give up on some dream we once believed would come true. I've recently come to that conclusion for a second time in my life and it's a harsh reality we all must face.

I've given up on searching for those blue eyes from a childhood dream. Twice I thought I found them. Twice I poured myself into a relationship that was doomed to fail. Twice I was left a complete train wreck in the end. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me thrice... and I'm just as done as a hockey puck that started out as a burger on the grill. Somehow I believe that to be a pretty amazing metaphor for my current frame of mind. Yeah, I got burned.

Eye color matters no more than height, age or skin tone. Brown eyes are just as beautiful as blue, and green seems to show a persons soul, straight to the core of their being. Blue is a recessive gene, one that I myself have been lucky enough to possess. Perhaps I've been analyzing that dream all wrong.

According to the Experience Project:

"To dream of seeing an eye, warns you that watchful enemies are seeking the slightest chance to work injury to your business. This dream indicates to a lover, that a rival will usurp him if he is not careful. To see blue eyes, denotes weakness in carrying out any intention."

I was only 7 when I first started having the dream. I believed it to be the man of my dreams, so to speak. Through all the crazy dreams I've had over all the years, I became very accustomed to researching the dream interpretation websites. However, one dream I never analyzed was the one of the mysterious blue eyed man... until now.

Going back and remembering my dream, this analytical observation seems to be very interesting according to the times in my life I've had it. The dream seemed to always come when I started to date someone new, or there was some new love interest in my life. Very few men I've ever known haven't come face to face with the mysterious blue eyed stranger in my dreams and lost the race. If I break down this new interpretation I have, it seems to make far more sense to me.

"The dream indicates to a lover that a rival will usurp him if he is not careful." It seemed to indicate without my knowledge that my new love interest wasn't 'the one' and that the relationship was bound to fail because that person wasn't somebody I would forsake all others for. How true it was, since each of those men couldn't survive a challenge provided by some fictitious character in a child's imagination.

My father has remarkable blue eyes - the color of a glacier. Perhaps at that age I was concerned with comparing any man in my life with the man I knew my father to be when I was seven years old. Perhaps I let that dream become too much a part of me, to the point of near-obsession. I would seek out men with blue eyes. I would search in the eyes of strangers for that familiar spark I saw in my dreams. I never quite found what I was looking for. Well, I did once, but that was a few years ago now and I've never seen him again. Surprisingly, his eyes were a dark green - not blue.

It's time to give up on that childhood fantasy. It's hard, I admit. All my life I've searched for that mysterious man. It seemed to keep me believing in love and left me a hopeful (or hopeless) romantic for all these years. Who knows - I may have passed up the most remarkable man I may have ever known in my life only because he didn't have blue eyes. Maybe he's still out there and I just haven't met him yet. Maybe I've met him and I haven't realized it yet. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

The dream is over. After 24 years of searching, I've finally woken up completely. My mysterious blue eyed stranger doesn't exist except in my childhood imagination. Love might still exist, and I do have faith in that, but it's time to stop looking into a certain color of eyes for the answers I'll never have from a man who doesn't exist.

I fell in love with a dream... but I'm not Sleeping Beauty. That dream will never kiss me awake.