Anyone would do tonight.

Self doubts, nostalgia, and failure have been plaguing me all day.

It started with the failure of a little thing known as an instruction permit test. For which I am supposed to be studying for in order to get my instruction permit so I can get my licence so I can drive and taste a little bit more of that freedom that I crave so much.

Failure wasn't possible for me and it happened. I don't know why I wasn't able to get it. I don't know why I failed. I read it. I studied. Failure is not an option but it brought me back to the reality of myself.

That I can fail. That I am not perfect. And with that, today came to me in the form of unhappiness and yearning because I woke up with him in my mind, another dream of him. Another dream where he is still with me and we are happy, and just joyfully being us. And I need to come to terms with it. I hate dreaming of him because it reminds me of how painful my reality it is. How unbearable is the fact that no one in the whole goddamn world calls me their sweetheart.

I was lonely for a relationship. It entered my being and surrounded me, engulf me in it's draining emotions, and I try to forget. Try so hard to forget how it felt to be happy in a relationship. And ended up trying in the wrong place. In my sanctuary. In my hammock with a book in my lap, swinging softly in the breeze. Knowing that no one would interrupt me.

Big Mistake. I remembered how one magically night years ago when I didn't realized that it was magic but just plain seducing, I dared. My sense of risking it all not having gone anywhere. I did risk it.

I was reading there one summer evening, being all of myself at at age 18 turning 19, I thought I had the world in my hands. I felt beautiful, school was out, I had a summer job, and my first boyfriend who I hadn't at that point have sex with yet because he was a virgin and I was playing out to see if he was really mine to keep in a relationship. Seeing if he like me for me, and not for my body.

It was one of those hot sticky but windy nights where everything feels wet. My uncle had just moved from Seattle and was currently living with us. It was because of this that I took this risk. Such a huge risk. He was sleeping in the living room till he found his own place, so I knew that once my parents had retired to their room, they would not come out again.

By this point because of my work hours, I would make it a habit to read late into the night on the hammock, deliciously enjoying a book under the desert sky. My parents never suspected anything that when my boyfriend got out of work at 11:30 (I still remember) that I called him. I called him and told him to come over. He did, riding his bike from his work to my house since he didn't have his car yet. I snuck him through the side gate in my backyard.

Everyone has stories, memories, of lovely romantic, star dazzling evenings in their relationships of how they were wined and dine, taken dancing, frolicking on the beach, just beautiful romance days that are remembered sweetly with a sadness if the relationship ended or a secret smile of knowing, of appreciation if the relationship was still alive but with a different kind of passion fueling it.

But what they tell you is not the full story. They just tell you, it was one of the most romantic nights in my life. And they expect you to understand, to feel what it was to be them on that night and be treated by a person so wonderfully that the word enchanting meant what it meant.

My night didn't involve money. Didn't involve going out. It didn't involve music or food or entertainment. What it did involved was a summer dress used as PJs because it was becoming frayed, the smell of fast food in the air coming from his uniform. The giggles of a girl high on happiness as she watched her first boyfriend distractedly looking around, being a nervous wreck because if they were caught, who knew what the consequences were except for that they were bad, very bad.

The coaxing of shy murmurings to climb into the hammock, to take off his shoes, to take off his work shirt, and climb in with me on the woven fabric. His smile so boyish still, his eyes reflecting the same level of mischievousness that was felt because we were old enough to have an adult relationship and feel the seriousness of each other, and yet young enough to still feel like teenagers rebelling with that night.

What surprise me was how little he knew and how I opened up his world. He had never even been on a hammock before, much less the luxury that was mine. A stolen hammock, different, sturdy from the ones that are seen in ads because it is durable, more like swinging on a thick mat than the image of strings woven together that are so often brought to mind.

He didn't even know how to get into one, how to climb in one. I had to stop the hammock, get out, show him how I climb in or else he would have tipped us both over with his crazy legs trying to jump in. Trying to be quiet and stifle laughter at his naive, and hiding the bit of shock that it gave me.

I settled myself into it first, getting comfortable with my book, lazing around, and caught him staring, looking me up and down, watching how he blush by the faint light of the moon as he realized I caught him checking me out. I smiled and beckoned. He climb in so slowly, afraid to disturb the illusion I had created, the aura changing from playfulness and giggles to one of unmistakable desire, unsaid feelings of love, and a thin layer of fear of taking a risk with each other's hearts.

I don't even think we talk much beyond idle chatter of how our days were. Soon the talking stop and the soft kissing and whispered conversations cut in by the inability to stop tracing each other's body due to our urges. Minutes. Hours. Nearly the whole night was spent with each other in that hammock, swinging, moving, murmuring silly notions, kissing, revealing new things about each other that we didn't know before. Lovely, beautiful, desire, passion, love, yes love, form our connection that night and when he left, well past 4 in the morning, I could have cried because I wanted him back. I wanted the night to be young again. I wanted him and me in the hammock, an ignored book between us. I wanted my fingers tracing the outline of his collarbone, wanted him showering me with those warm kisses everywhere on my face, behind my ears. And it wasn't just about lust. It was so much more than that. For the longest time it really was just that feeling of 'holding hands'.

It was about wanting to feel loved and know that I was. That in the night, there was nothing else between us. It was just us, him on my mind, and I on his mind only. No one was more important, nothing else matter. We were all that we needed or care for. He was really my everything and I was his everything.

I was. He was.

And today I was no one's everything. Not even close. All I can hope is to not be forgotten. To be someone's tonight and let them be my tonight. All this came back to me because I went outside to deal with my moodiness, the restlessness I felt at myself for being so stupid. For not passing that test.

And on that hammock, I closed my eyes and heard the way the wood groan softly as I swung from side to side, and I could almost feel him right there next to me, I could see him. And it hurt because I knew that unlike that night, if I open my eyes there would no one there. No missed phone calls from that special person, no texts, no voice mails, nothing for me because no one was thinking of me in terms of being their everything.

I did what I always do. Even back in high school, middle school when the waves of loneliness, of . I push the feelings as far away as I could and read obsessively so I could forget. I could forget my own reality. My own pain. I could forget my own personal demons.

All I can think of now is that I need to write. Or read. Maybe the knock the fuck out with a sleeping pill or two. It's always better in the morning and besides I have to live up to my own philosophisy anyway.

Because I do relate to absent people than build relationships with those around me.

Not that it's by choice. And it will be better in the morning.

It has to be.