I’ve been cheating on you with tumblr

…passing notes in class with The Lost Boys cool kids.

But I do have something I feel like sharing somewhere, and it may fit here better than there? I have some followers there, too, but they’re more interested in my Lost Boys-adjacent and vampire content. This is something else.

So… some Spooky Season’s ago, I started a project, using photographs I took, myself, along with stock art, and editing software (Canva). The idea was to create a set of “Oracle Cards” called The October Oracle. 31 cards. One for every day of October.

Didn’t finish the year I started it. Came back to it one spring, to resounding “crickets” on social media, because it was so seasonally inappropriate. I had thought, wtf, if I start MONTHS ahead, I’ll definitely finish before Halloween.

The lack of interest from everyone ELSE led to me losing MY interest, too.

I think I may have toyed with it a little again, last fall?

Still unfinished.

BUT, I’ve been adding to it. Up to I think 16 cards now, plus the “card back” art, a stock image with some pretty lettering on it, and my Instagram username.

In the process of doing so, I’ve been going back over old Instagram posts, old photos in my phone, older posts on Facebook, etc., looking for content I can use.

I found something that really struck me tonight, since it connects to a dream I had just before waking up this morning. A dream about someone. I think there were potentially moments within the dream where he was someone else, but for most of it, he was K. My most epic “one who got away.”

I’m at a point where I can reflect back on all that without feeling sad, or hurt, or any number of unpleasant emotions. Even the part where I was looking him up online years after he moved overseas, because I’d seen a profile on the dating site where we met that VAGUELY reminded me of him (anonymous icon for a photo), and I was curious if he was back in town… and I unwittingly came across his obituary.

I get that maybe I knew just a fraction of him, didn’t see him in person on that many occasions in the grand scheme of things… was only ever-so-slightly involved with him for a meager 5 years, off and on. But I still mourned.

Bringing it back around to something less sorrowful… maybe it was fate that I found this post the same day I dreamed about him? On Instagram, I had reflected on a conversation he and I had one winter. He was a very wintery boy. Big time snowboarder. Living it up in the mountains, most of the year, with brief visits here.

In the post, I mentioned having gone back through old journals, specifically looking for a photo of him which I didn’t succeed in finding… but I came across a summary of a phone conversation, instead (probably having reread a LOT of entries). Even when I had posted about it on Instagram, the memory made me smile, helped heal the hurt more than time and space had done up until that point. And it was a lot of fun, actually, because it was something I had entirely forgotten about, until I reread my journal.

Context: I was calling to wish him a Merry Christmas. Which becomes obvious, but that factoid helps differentiate who was who in the lines of dialogue below, without my having to caption.

“Hello?”

“Hi! Merry Christmas!”

Big yawn. “I missed you, too.”

“Aw, you did?”

“I said, ‘Merry Christmas to you, too.’”

(He very clearly did NOT say “Merry Christmas to you, too.”)

Can you say “emotionally unavailable?” (But that’s okay… I was, too.)

But he DID go on to say he’d be back in the state come spring. That he’d like to see me. Up to me, no pressure, plenty of time to decide, etc., and he appreciated that I still called sometimes.

We had our sweet moments, too, not just our angsty or sexy ones.

This conversation was definitely sweet. Even in the moment, I think I was more amused than anything that he admitted he’d missed me then immediately felt the need to cover his ass, since he’d said it first, and I hadn’t said it back.

Nice to see it pop up in my feed, all over again.

Veil is thinning; spirits from the other side are closer than before. Wherever he is, I hope he’s at peace. I still think about him pretty much every day (and one of my other lost loves, still around in the mortality sense but gone in every other possible way).

I guess I’m okay with being a bit emotionally “haunted,” because the “ghosts” in my thoughts generally these days just make me smile, wistfully.

Oh, I did dream about the OTHER “one who got away,” who I knew a lot longer, who’s still alive. We’re just no longer in each other’s orbits. He cut ties this last time, but it had an air of permanence, finality, that maybe his other departures did not. Unless that was my imagination. (For the record, I disappeared and reappeared on him, at times, too.)

That dream was pretty recent, as well.

It was very weird. But sharing the bizarro details with my long distance bestie was enough to make me ALMOST unblock him and snoop through his socials. The warning bells about “ARE YOU SURE? If you do this, it’ll be 48 hours before you can unblock, and ANYTHING can happen in 48 hours” were enough to deter me.

I guess you can be haunted by the living every bit as much as by the dead.

Love is spooky stuff.

But I’m (mostly) cool with that.

Happy Spooky Season!!!

Now that it’s after midnight here, my kiddo comes home in FIVE DAYS!!! EEEP!!!

Much rejoicing in the realm. We can do all the Halloween things.

OH and I entered a Halloween-themed writing contest, through a semi-nearby history museum.

Wish me luck!

Here’s something cute I saw one day and felt compelled to document. Seems fitting.