Went to bed way too late? Check. Didn't take my Seroquel because I was worried that it would affect me if I got up too early? Check. Woke up having nightmares and crying? Check. Most excellent start to my day.

The nightmares were about him again. They always are. I can't get that man off my mind. This time he was dating someone new and she was expecting his baby. It may seem random, and an odd choice for a nightmare, but I'll get to that in a little bit. The important thing to keep in mind in all of this is that I had a lot of plans with him - we talked often about a life together. Not a month, not a year - a lifetime. It's only started occurring to me lately that maybe those plans were never in his mind. All our talks about the future, where we'd like to live, the path we'd like to walk and the trips we'd take together - I wonder if it was just talk for him. If everything about us was just... smoke and mirrors.

In the beginning, when we were just friends and he was recently separated, he'd ask a lot of questions about my life. One thing he asked about often was my kids, and once he asked whether I wanted more or if I was done. I remember explaining that I'd always wanted three but that I'd capped myself at two after having experienced being a mom and wife first-hand. I'll never forget his response to that - "Maybe you're just done having children with M." He told me that if I found the right person, I might just want that third child. And he, being who he is, was right.

When I came back from visiting him in February, it was with a renewed sense of hope for us. I have loved that man with every bit of my heart since almost the first moment we started talking again. My soul feels bound to him. And after getting to see him face-to-face, to touch him, to cuddle into him on the couch and sleep next to him at night... Those talks. That future. It seemed real and possible and within my grasp, and my mind went places I had honestly thought it never would. I began to think about how much he seems to like kids. About how he always asked about mine, and how excited he seemed at the prospect of being in their lives. About the fact that he once mentioned wondering whether he'd regret not having any. And I started to think and dream about that third child. About the possibility of sharing something that big and important with him.

And I didn't tell him.

I was worried that I'd freak him out, since we were still long distance. I figured it was a subject to broach when we were finally living together. Concrete steps. Concrete dreams. We never got there. And so those thoughts, those dreams... that hoped for third child. They've slipped into the realm of nightmares. Something I'll never get now, and that he may well share with someone else. And I know the friends I told about this are happy that I never told him, but not having mentioned it to him doesn't erase the hope I held in my head and heart that I'd get to have a third kid. That I'd possibly have the second daughter I always wanted, with a man I love more than I can possibly describe. Instead, that hope has turned into sadness, and grief, and what ifs, like everything else about us.

And I am living in my own personal hell, stuck with memories and dreams turned to ice and ash. And I wish I had never gone there. I wish I had stayed home and cried then instead.