Writing this at 11:19PM so a lot of the content of this dream has left me, however I know a lot of it involed my highschool best friend and the romantic feelings I had for her.
A few months ago I had been reminiscing over our friendship and those feelings I had for her, and was feeling them again, even though it has been roughly 8 years since she has been in my life. In hindsight, without the rose coloured glasses, I have always had a huge love/hate relationship with her. At some points she has almost become synonomous with my interpretation of BPD (of which we are both diagnosed) I can't fully do the justice of articulating what I mean by this right now because I have too many thoughts to get out. I definitely split on her very often (literally only just conciously re-realized this) up until this point I am realizing that I have always found it extremely difficult to look at her objectively as a person rather than idealizing or devaluing our relationship. It was always "this person was likely my soulmate" even though I conciously have issues with that type of language sometimes.
In the dream I remember thinking or saying something akin to "yeah, maybe she was a soulmate or something, but if she was it was for that period of time. the person I am choosing to be with... I am not choosing them based on ~if they are my soulmate or not - I am choosing them because I am choosing me."
I woke up light a massive weight had been lifted off of me and have felt it all day even when normal daily stressors have happened. I know a massive reason I had this dream is because of the conversation I had with my MHOT yesterday, and the dream felt kinda like another piece of my attachment and relationship trauma has finally been processed and I partialy understand it a little more.
When I would have my close friendship/relationship breakdowns happen it was so devastating because the loss of something that made me have a sense of belonging and not being alone in the world was now suddenly gone and I think subconciously I worried that that meant that any connection I will ever have was always doomed to be a farce. I found it psycologically very hard to hold onto the concept of someone feeling fated to be in my life but there being some kind of expiry date on it. Phrases like "seasonal friends" and rhetoric of "they were in your life but were only meant to stay for x amount of time" as if its some fated lesson or something really infuriates me - a lot more than the simple idea of destiny and fate. I think its because I associate that language with a flippant attitude toward it, but for me it is anything BUT flippant. I feel an immense sense of loss and grief over the breakdown and deteriation of my past friendships and, while I do think it is very important to move on from that - for me it has to be done in a calm, mindful, deliberate way where I am conciously grieving and letting go. I can not minimize the effects this loss has caused me. I am forever changed by all of this and I do not want to believe that predestiny put this specific person in my life as an "opportunity for me to grow" I do not like that mentality. to me it invalidates what i believed was a true and real connection.
I am realizing, finally, that I have definitley been looking at this froma very skewed/ black and white lens. I am putting all of these big unknowable abstract belief systems onto these people. I am thinking about it too much, too autisticlly. So much so that I am getting too caught up in the details. I can hold the space for my regrets and my grief and my trauma, the broken promises, while acknowleding that these people were important to me and I loved them deeply but that time has passed and I have grown.